Chelys 15 titles - Viola da Gamba Society

The Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society
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Volume 17 (1988)
Editorial, p. 2
Ian Payne
British Library Add. MSS 30826-8: a Set of Park-Books from Trinity
College, Cambridge?
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 3-16
Graham Nelson
The Lyra-viol Variation Sets of William Corkine
Chelys, vol 17 (1988), pp. 17-23
Ephraim Segerman
On Praetorius and English Viol Pitches
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 24-27
Graham Strahle
Fantasy and Music in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 28-32
John R. Catch
Talbot's Viols
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 33-39
Letters
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 39-40
Obituaries
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 41-42
Music Reviews
Chelys, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 43-51
EDITORIAL
The theme of this year's journal, music and viols of the Elizabethan and Stuart
periods, is an appropriate one for 1988, the year in which we celebrate two major
anniversaries in British history: the quatqrcentenary of the defeat of the Spanish
Armada and the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution.
1988 also marks Wendy Hancock's retirement as editor of Chelys. Wendy first coedited the journal in 1977 with Peter Holman before taking over as sole editor from
1980. Under her guidance, Chelys has achieved considerable recognition among scholars
and performers alike.
A change of editor provides a suitable occasion on which to reiterate the journal's
raison d'être, namely to promote research into all areas of bowed string music. In recent
years Chelys has published major articles on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century viols
and their repertoire. Indeed, as the journal of the Viola da Gamba Society it is
important that Chelys should continue to focus on this fruitful area of research.
However, it is also appropriate that the journal should expand its horizons into other
aspects of bowed string music. Much work needs to be done on medieval bowed
instruments and the early violin repertoire offers a rich source for further study. The
editor would welcome contributions in all these fields.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Wendy for her advice and
encouragement during my first year as editor.
LYNN HULSE
[3]
BRITISH LIBRARY ADD. MSS 30826-28: A SET OF
PART-BOOKS FROM TRINITY COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE?
IAN PAYNE
In a recent article tracing the flowering of a documented viol-playing tradition at
Trinity College, I noted that two of its organists and masters of the choristers - Thomas
Wilkinson (1609-12) and one Mason (1612-14) - were of special importance to the
maintenance of this tradition. 1 In this light, I pointed to the significance of the fact that
an incomplete set of early seventeenth-century partbooks, GB-Lbl Add. MSS 30826-28, 2
contains a number of dances for five viols by these men. In fact, certain other ‘local’
composers represented in these books, for example, John Amner 3 of Ely Cathedral and
George Kirbye 4 of Rushbrooke Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, further increase the
likelihood that they originated in East Anglia. But the inclusion of music by two Trinity
organists, of an anonymous “Trinitye Colledg Pavan”, and the distinct possibility that one
of the College lay clerks copied the manuscripts some time between 1613 and c.1623, 5
suggest even more strongly that they originated within the precincts of the College itself.
To this circumstantial evidence may be added the conjectural identification of at least one
or possibly two other composers whose music is found in them, namely ‘Mr Jackson’ and
‘Mr Dethick’, as Trinity men. 6 This paper examines various probable links with Trinity
against the background of its well documented violplaying tradition, c.1594-c.1615.
The Repertory
The set, which lacks both Quintus and Tenor, comprises the Canto, Alto and Bassus
parts of twenty-seven five-part dances apparently for viol consort - twenty-five pavans
and two galliards. All but three have ascriptions which include at least the composer’s
surname, and only one lacks an ascription of any kind. The copyist, who was responsible
for transcribing all twenty-seven pieces, probably had access to College part-books, or at
least to other sources of the three pavans by Wilkinson and eight by Mason. The fact that
he began his selection with these sizeable groups may indicate that he found them closest
‘Instrumental Music at Trinity College, Cambridge, c.1594-c.1615: Archival and Biographical Evidence’,
M&L, Ixviii (1987), 128-40
2 For a brief discussion of these part-books see Warwick Edwards: The Sources of Elizabethan Consort
Music, i (Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 1974), 257-8
3 Anthony Greening: ‘Amner, John’, The New Grove, i (London, 1980), 330-31
4 David Brown: ‘Kirbye, George’, The New Grove, x (London, 1980), 72
5 See pp. 9-10
6 See pp. 5 -7. Both Jackson and Dethick are listed with incipits of their extant consorts in Gordon Dodd:
Thematic Index of Music for Viols (1980-87). The latter, however, is spelt ‘Pethick’ in error; there is
no doubt that the initial capital letter in this name as it appears in Add. MSS 30826-28 is a secretaryscript ‘D’.
1
to hand, which again might suggest that he was a Trinity man working from College
sources. 7
Numbers 1-13 were probably copied from one or at the most two sources. The only
composer in this opening group other than Mason and Wilkinson is ‘Mr Amner’, almost
certainly John Amner, organist and master of the choristers at Ely Cathedral from 1610
to 1641. 8 The art of viol-playing was strongly encouraged at Ely, certainly from 1604/5,
when the earliest surviving Treasurer’s Soluciones account records payments for
maintaining, restringing and teaching the instruments: [4]
Item: [paid] to Thomas Wiborowe for teachinge
the schollers on the vialls
Item: paid to Tho. Wiborowe for charges aboute
the vialles,
6s. 8d.
17s. 10d. 9
But they may have been taught as early as 1580, if not earlier, when Edward Watson, a
lay clerk, was appointed one of the ‘Other Instructors in Musick, & on the Viols
Occasionally’. Watson died in 1587 and was subsequently replaced by Wiborowe in
1605 10 who received 26s. 8d. for teaching the viols, and 13s. 4d. for strings, virtually
every year until 1634/5. Wiborowe’s successor, Robert Claxton, is the first Ely
musician to be styled ‘Master of the Violls. 11
In a recent article discussing these manuscripts, John Irving claims, in error, that ‘Mason’s ...8th and 9th
pavans were omitted by the copyist’ (‘A Note on British Library Add. MSS 30826-8’, The Consort, xliii
(1987), 17). Only Mason’s 4th pavan was in fact omitted. There is a discrepancy in the numbering of
nos. 8 and 9 in Add. MS 30826 f. 5v (containing two pavans, and not one as stated in Irving’s inventory)
where they were twice mis-numbered by the copyist, first as 9 and 10, then as 10 and 11, respectively.
Their correct numbering, almost certainly 8 and 9, was restored by the copyist in Add. MSS 30827-28
and is printed (with incipits) in Cdr Dodd’s Thematic Index. The following compositions, reconstructed
and edited by the present writer, are to be published for viols or recorders (Westerleigh Publications,
Thornhaugh, Lustleigh, S. Devon): the three pavans by Wilkinson, eight by Mason, the anonymous
“Trinitye Colledg Pavan”, and those by Kirbye, Jackson, Dethick and Gibbons. For an inventory of the
five-part pieces in these manuscripts, see Augustus Hughes-Hughes: Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the
British Museum, iii (London, 1965), 221
8 Greening: op. cit.
9 Cambridge University Library, El y Dean and Chapter records, (CUL EDC), 3/l/2, ff. 7r and 8r,
r
respectively. I am grateful to Dr Dorothy Owen, Keeper of the Archives, for permission to publish
extracts from these records.
10 CUL Ely Cathedral Music MS 4. The flyleaves contain lists, copied c.1754, principally of the Cathedral
Organists, 1541-1682, but they also list Watson and Wiborowe as the first two’Other Instructors
...’and give the dates of their appointments. It should be noted, however, that this is an eighteenthcentury title and that these instructors are not thus styled in surviving contemporary archives. A
transcript of these lists is in W.E. Dickson: A Catalogue of Ancient Choral Services and Anthems preserved
... in the Cathedral Church of Ely (Cambridge, 1861), 5
11 . CUL EDC 3/1/2, f. 208r. Claxton took over the viol-teaching duties from Wiborowe in 1635/6, but he is
not referred to as ‘Mr of the Violls’ until the next year, 1636/7 (Ibid., f. 220r). This title is of interest in
suggesting that such teaching occupied an important place in the musical scheme of things at Ely, rather
than implying that Claxton had undergone a meteoric rise in his musical status during the previous year.
7
Amner, who was a chorister in 1593, 12 was probably taught to play on the viol at
about the same time. His later contacts with Cambridge, insofar as they concern his
music-copying activities, are well documented in the Cathedral accounts; for example,
in November 1637 he received £5 “for his paines in Pricking the Newbookes of the
Quier’. 13 It may have been on such a visit that Amner brought autograph copies of
some of his anthems and services to Cambridge for inclusion in the Peterhouse
Caroline part-books, 14 but his pavan and galliard probably found their way to
Cambridge during the first two decades of the seventeenth century.
The selection of dances by Wilkinson is followed by three of Thomas Weelkes’s
pavans (nos. 14-16). Weelkes had no apparent links with Cambridge, but his works
circulated widely and were certainly known there. 15 The next dance in the manuscript,
the anonymous “Trinitye Colledg Pavan” (no. 17), is of great interest for two reasons:
first, it is the only work in the set which lacks an ascription of any kind, suggesting that
the scribe himself may have composed it; and secondly, its specific title makes it
virtually certain to have been composed by someone with Trinity connections. A
Trinity lay clerk, working between 1613 and c.1623, would fit both descriptions
perfectly. A third factor, musical style, may tentatively suggest that a professional
musician rather than an experienced professional composer was responsible. In its
original state the pavan may have had some very convincing moments, as the skeletal
opening bars imply:
. CUL Ely Diocesan Records (EDR), 8/12/13, f. 18r. Amner appears in the list of choristers drawn up for
the episcopal visitation of the Cathedral on 22 October of this year. He is not in the list for September
1590 (CUL EDR 13/2/11, f. 38v), nor in that for October 1596 (CUL EDR 8/2/16, f. 37r).
13 CUL EDC 3/1/2, f. 230r (1637/38); see also ff. 221r and 224r (1636/37)
14 . See John Morehen: The Sources of English Cathedral Music, c.1617-c.1644, i (Ph.D., University of
Cambridge, 1969), 179-82
15 There is, for example, sufficient similarity between some of the musical ideas in Henry Loosemore’s
five-part full anthem “O tell the daughter of Sion” (which was certainly composed for use at King’s
by the late 1620s, and was being sung at Peterhouse in the 1630s) and Weelkes’s sixpart “Hosanna to
the Son of David” to lead me strongly to suspect that the King’s organist was acquainted with
Weelkes’s musical style. It must be admitted, however, that the latter is poorly represented in the socalled ‘Henry Loosemore’s Organ Book’ (US - NYp MS Drexel 5469) which was in use in the Chapel
by the end of the 1620s. (See Thurston Dart: ‘Henry Loosemore’s Organ Book’, Transactions of the
Cambridge Bibliographical Society, iii (1960), 145-47 for an inventory of contents.)
12
[5] But it must also have had gauche, clumsy progressions (see *) which are virtually
impossible to reconstruct with confidence:
James Harding’s galliard (no. 18) is preserved in many sources, including the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book where it appears in a keyboard arrangement by William Byrd. Harding was a
flautist at the English Court, 1575-1626. 16 Given Trinity’s royal connections, and especially
the frequent visits of royal musicians during the early seventeenth century, 17 it is not
surprising that it should turn up here.
“Mr Kirbyes Pavan” (no. 19) is the only surviving consort music by the Suffolk
madrigalist, George Kirbye (c.1565 -1634). This piece, with the oblique reference in its
opening bars to John Dowland’s “Lachrymae”, possibly dates from the 1590s, when early
versions of the tune existed, rather than post-1600, the year in which Dowland’s earliest
version was published. 18 This pavan is typical of the anachronistic style of many of Kirbye’s
madrigals preserved in Thomas Hammond’s autograph part-books dating from the 1630s. 19
“Jacksons Pavan” (no. 20), like Kirbye’s, is distinctly Elizabethan in style, and probably
dates from the 1590s. No one of this name appears in the lists of lay clerks and other
musicians employed by Cambridge colleges; but the fact that the ascription is written in all
the part-books without the usual honorific prefix ‘Mr’ indicates that Jackson may have
been known to the copyist. The composer is probably identical with the Daniel Jackson
who matriculated at Trinity in 1589 as a Pensioner (i.e. an undergraduate wealthy enough to
pay his own fees), proceeded B.A. in 1593/4 and M.A. in 1597, 20 and was an undergraduate
chorister between 1589 and 1597. 21 In his first year as a chorister he was paid 13s. 4s.,
Andrew Ashbee: ‘Harding, James’, The New Grove, viii (London, 1980), 159
See Payne: ‘Instrumental Music at Trinity College’, 138
18 M.C. Boyd: Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism (Philadelphia, 2/1962),166-67. Although Kirbye is
known today chiefly for his Italianate madrigals, some of his earlier works were
apparently scored for solo voice and a quartet of instruments, very probably viols. See ‘George Kirbye:
Madrigals from Manuscript Sources’, Ian Payne (ed.), The English Madrigalists, xxxix (London, 1989),
Introduction, iv, nos. 1-8, and Appendix
19 See principally Craig Monson: Voices and Viols in England, 1600-1650: the Sources and the Music (Ann Arbor,
1982), Chapter 3 passim.
20 W.W. Rouse Ball and J.A. Venn (eds.): Admissions to Trinity College, Cambridge, ii (15461700) (London,
1913), 170
21 It is clear that for much, if not all, of this period Jackson would have had a broken voice and would not
have been a true chorister, but a so-called ‘dry’ chorister; see Ian Payne: ‘The Musical Establishment at
Trinity College, Cambridge, 1546-1644’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Ixxiv (1985 ), 53-69.
16
17
appearing last in the list of ten names and styled simply ‘Jackson’. 22 Between 1590 and 1593
he continues to be listed by his surname only, and he received the usual 3s. 4d. quarterly
stipend throughout this four-year period. 23 In 1594, however, having taken the Bachelor’s
degree, he is referred to for the first time as D[iscipul]us Jackson’ and immediately joins the
other Discipuli at the top of the list. He continues to be thus styled in 1594 and 1595 and
appears as a chorister for the last time in 1597 when, having proceeded M.A., he is styled
[6] ‘Mr Jackson’. 24 Jackson would certainly have been fourteen years old by 1594, when
he is first termed Discipulus, but he may already have attained this age by the time of his
admission in 1589.
Nothing is known of Jackson’s musical activities after 1597. His will, proved on 11
January 1636, 25 states that he resided in St Botolph’s Parish but makes no reference to
musical activity or materials. The accompanying probate inventory makes no mention
of music books or instruments, though this is by no means unusual among the
surviving probate records relating to Cambridge musicians. 26 The present piece, his
only restorable pavan, resembles Kirbye’s in several small details, most notably the
Lachrymae-like opening phrase and the implicitly similar cadential harmonies:
but Kirbye’s pavan, to judge from the remaining fragments, is more skilfully composed
than Jackson’s:
He would, however, have had musical training and may possibly have played a part in general musicmaking in the College.
22 Trinity College Archives (TCA), Junior Bursar’s Account, 1588/9, f. 187v. I am grateful to the Master
and Fellows of Trinity College for permission to publish extracts from the College Archives.
23 TCA Senior Bursar’s Accounts (SBAs), 1589/90, ff. 152v-153r; 1590/1, ff. 178v-179r; 1591/2,
f. 203v; and 1592/3, ff. 226v-227r
24 TCA SBAs, 1593/4, ff. 255v-256r; 1594/5, ff. 278v-279r; and 1596/7, ff. 320v-320(a)r
25 CUL University Archives, Vice-Chancellor’s Court Wills, Bundle K, 1632-36.
26 See the transcripts from all known musicians’ inventories from the period 1557-1667 in Payne:
‘Instrumental Music at Trinity College’, Appendix, 139-40
[7] The next piece with probable Cambridge associations is “Mr Dethicks Pavin” (no.
24). John Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigiensis 27 reveals that the name ‘Dethick(e)’ or
‘Dethyck’ was not uncommon among members of the University during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (probably deriving from the place of that name in
Derbyshire), and states that one ‘Dethicke’ was a ‘Sizar at Trinity’ in 1567. However,
there is no mention of this name in the printed admissions records of Trinity itself, 28 or
in the lists of choristers and lay clerks which are preserved in the various Bursars’
accounts. Fortunately, another possibility is suggested by the list of Dethicks in Venn
which includes two men who were also alternatively called Derrick. 29 Neither of these is
identical with the composer, but this precedent opens up the possibility that ‘Mr
Dethick’ the composer is identifiable as Gerrard Derrick, a singing man at York
Minster c.1590-1604, some of whose church music had found its way to Cambridge by
the mid-1630s when the Peterhouse Caroline part-lbooks were compiled. 30
‘Gerrard Direck, cantator’ (alias ‘Direck Gerrerd’ and Jerrit Derricke’) is first
mentioned in the York Minster accounts for 1590/ 1, when he received a half-yearly
Part I to 1751, ii (Cambridge, 1922), 37
See above, note 20; the manuscript admissions records have also been searched, without success.
29 Alumni, loc. cit.: the two entries are ‘Dethick or Dyrrycke, Henry’ and ‘Derrick, Dyrycke or Dethycke,
Francis’. There is no evidence in Venn that Gerrard Derricke, the York Minster lay clerk, was ever a
member of the University, unless he may be identified with the Sizar of Trinity in 1567 mentioned by
Venn. However, in view of the fact that a search of the Trinity archives has failed to turn up any
reference to this individual, this is in all probability a mistake on Venn’s part.
30 See the list of works in Ralph Daniel and Peter le Huray: The Sources of English Church Music, 1549-1660, ii
(London, 1972), 99. The “Jubilate” is shortly to be published in an edition by the present writer, in
Westerleigh Publications’s ‘Cantica Antiqua’ series.
27
28
salary of £5 for his services in the choir. 31 He is next referred to in 1592 when, in
addition to eight vicars choral, the choristers, and two other singing men, he was listed
as a third cantator but his name was subsequently deleted. 32 Despite an incomplete run
of accounts for the overall period of his employment, it is probable that he was hired
during periods for which the accounts do not survive. He was certainly paid the halfyearly salary of £5 in 1594, 1598, 1600 and 1602. The last payment was made to him in
1604, 33 and his short will, dated 18 September of the same year, was proved by his
‘kinswoman’ Margaret Clement on 16 April 1605. 34 It contains no musical references.
This is not surprising as he appears to have been a casualty of the plague which ravaged
the City between August and November of the previous year:
Memorandum: that I, Jerrit Derricke, lyinge sore visited by the hand of God & beinge
willinge therefore whielst I have yet a little tyme & remembrance to set in order myne
estate...
Derricke left a young daughter, Anne, with the instruction that his kinswoman should
inherit his estate ‘if it please God [for] my daughter Anne to dye of this sicknes,’
thereby strengthening the view that he was a plague victim.
“Mr Dethicks Pavin”, like Derricke’s extant church music, 35 is written in a very
conservative style which eschews all expressive, madrigalian harmony, such as the
cadential progression
76534-3
for example, which was rapidly gaining currency in England during the 1590s via the
first madrigalian publications of Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley. But its main
flaw is perhaps its reliance upon the bland repetition of a cadential progression
consisting of the primary triads of the tonic key, though these are to some extent
York Minster Archives, Vicars Choral (YMA VC), Bursar’s Roll VC6/4/59 (Martinmas 1590Pentecost
1591). 1 am grateful to the Archivist, Miss Susan Beckley, for permission to publish extracts from the
Minster Archives.
32 YMA VC Chamberlain’s Roll VC6/2/100 (Pentecost-Martinmas 1592). This deletion is explained by the
fact that the Dean and Chapter appear to have considered about ten adult singers to be the optimum
number for the choir, and used a pool of around a half-dozen singingmen to make up the seven or eight
vicars choral to this number, as and when appropriate. It does not indicate that they had terminated
Derricke’s employment permanently, though it is likely that he, like some of the other singingmen, had
alternative means of support to see him through the periods when his services were not required.
33 YMS VC Bursar’s Rolls VC6/4/60 (Martinmas 1593-Pentecost 1594); VC6/4/61 (Martinmas 1597Pentecost 1598); VC6/4/62 (Pentecost-Martinmas 1600); VC6/4/63 (Pentecost-Martinmas 1602);
and VC6/4/64 (Martinmas 1603-Pentecost 1604)
34 University of York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, Dean and Chapter Probate
Register 5, (1557-1638), f. 178r
35 For details of a forthcoming edition of his ‘ jubilate”, see above note 30. His “Kyrie” and “Credo”
(the second entry in Daniel and le Huray: op. cit., 99), for example, sound very archaic beside much
of the music in the Peterhouse Caroline part-books, and seem to have abounded in the so-called
‘English’ cadence that was condemned by Thomas Morley as ‘naught and stale’ (A Plaine and Easie
Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597), ed. R. Alec Harman (London, 1952), 259, 272).
They also feature some rather four-square but competent passages in ‘Gimell’, apparently in six real
parts; however, there are no madrigalian elements such as cadences with suspended dominant
sevenths, and the music is very austere.
31
alleviated by an attractive opening section (Example 5) and some [8] shapely melodic
contours (Example 6), due allowance being made, of course, for my reconstructed parts:
The next piece with probable Cambridge connections, the Pavan “de le Roye” by
Orlando Gibbons (no. 25), is unique to this source. 36 Its style, while providing a foretaste
of the master’s mature consort music, suggests that it is an early work. Writing of the
composer’s incomplete five-part full anthem, “I am the resurrection”, Craig Monson
suggests that this anthem ‘might possibly represent one of Gibbons’s earlier efforts, written
during his time at King’s College’. 37 Although there is no record, archival or otherwise, of a
College-sponsored viol-playing tradition there at any time before the Restoration, other
evidence suggests that the performance of instrumental music was not unknown, 38 and it is
therefore not impossible that this pavan is also an early work.
Nos. 26 and 27, the “Pavan Magno Petrio” and “ 2da [i.e. Secunda] Pavin Petreio”,
respectively, are the only known instrumental compositions of the Danish composer
Mogens Pederson (c.1583-1623), alias ‘Magno Petreo’. 39 Pederson, who was a musician of
King Christian IV, studied with Giovanni [9] Gabrieli in Venice in 1599 and again in 1605,
before being sent to England in 1611 to serve Anne, Christian’s sister and James I’s queen.
Nothing is known of Pederson’s activities while in England, other than that he seems to
have been in contact with Francis Tregian, and that he returned home in August 1614.
There is no reason to doubt that these two pavans date from the period of Peterson’s visit,
A very different reconstruction is published in John Harper (ed.): ‘Orlando Gibbons: Consort Music’,
Musica Britannica, xlviii (London, 1982), 60
37 Op. cit., 126
38 See Payne: ‘Instrumental Music at Trinity College’, 132 n. 34
39 John Bergsagel: ‘Pederson, Mogens’, The New Grove, xiv (London, 1980), 328-30. All the biographical
information on Pederson in this paragraph is taken from this article. Further on Pederson’s two
pavans in these parFbooks, see J. Bergsagel: ‘Danish Musicians in England 1611-14: NewlyDiscovered Instrumental Music’, Dansk aarbog for musikforskning, vii (1973-6), 9-18.
36
but there is no evidence to connect him with Cambridge, and only the possibility of his
music reaching Trinity via some as yet unknown English court connections could easily
explain its presence in these part-books. Perhaps his greatest value to the present
investigation lies in the fact that the known dates of his stay in England suggest that much
of this music may have been copied in about 1613-14 if not as early as 1611 or 1612, and
that they are therefore roughly contemporaneous both with the Trinity periods of
Wilkinson and Mason, and with Thomas Staresmore’s appointment in 1613 as a College lay
clerk, the significance of which is discussed below.
Thomas Staresmore (?1585-1644): a Possible Copyist?
Given the above evidence of a Trinity provenance, it is reasonable to assume that these
part-books were copied either by a College officer or chapel musician, or else by someone
outside the College who had both strong connections with it and ready access to its music.
By a happy chance the University Archives, as we have seen, hold a considerable quantity
of probate material relating to various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century musicians
connected with either the University waits or Trinity and King’s Colleges. 40 The holograph
will of one such musician - Thomas Staresmore, who was appointed a lay clerk at Trinity
on 24 January 1613 and remained until c.1623 41 - reveals him as a very plausible copyist,
though the palaeographic evidence is not conclusive.
Both Staresmore’s known hand and that of Add. MSS 30826-28 are unusual in the wide
variety of letter-forms used, as well as in their inconsistency in joining a number of adjacent
letters (compare Plates 1 and 2). 42 Although the spelling of ‘Collegg’ with the medial ‘d’ is
very common in Cambridge records of the early seventeenth century, and cannot therefore
be taken as evidence that one man was responsible for copying both documents, the hands
are markedly similar, especially in the shape of the ligature ‘dg’. Other points in favour of
the suggested identification include the ‘Th’ ligature, the looped ‘b’,’d’,’g’and T (as in the
word ‘Colledge’), the small ‘o’ and the fact that it is not always separated from adjacent
letters by a space, and one form of the small letter ‘s’ ( E - not illustrated in Plate 2).
Unfortunately, some of the letter-forms in the will (e.g. the Roman ‘e’) do not occur in the
part-books; and there are no examples in the part-books of some of the more unusual and
distinctive letters, such as ‘q’, ‘x’ and ‘z’, which frequently appear in the will. Among the
notable dissimilarities are the capital letters ‘A’ and J’. Two further obstacles to comparison
(which may have affected the character of his handwriting) are first, that Staresmore was ill
- ‘crasie in [10] body’ as he puts it - when the will was written on 3 July 1643; and
secondly, between twenty and thirty years probably separate the two documents, since
the part-books were almost certainly compiled by the end of the second decade of the
See above, note 26
TCA Old Conclusion Book, 1607-73,38. It is not known for certain when Staresmore left Trinity: he
appears for the last time in TCA SBA, 1620/1 (f. 353r), when he received the statutory £8 annual
stipend, indicating that he served as a lay clerk for the whole year (the next surviving SBA is that
for 1636/7); he is first recorded as a lay clerk at King’s during the term ended at Michaelmas 1623
(see below, note 45), and must therefore have left Trinity by this date.
42 I am most grateful to Pamela Willetts, Deputy Keeper in the Dept. of Manuscripts, British Library, for
offering a very valuable second opinion on this comparison. Plate II and the musical examples are
published by kind permission of the British Library.
40
41
seventeenth century. Finally, the fact that the will is written principally in italic script,
while the part-books have pronounced characteristics of secretary script (as revealed by
the letter ‘r’, for example) is an additional barrier. 43
Thomas Staresmore is the only identifiable Trinity musician who is remotely likely to
have copied these part-books during the 1610s, when the music of Wilkinson, Strogers,
Kirbye and others was still in vogue in Cambridge. Staresmore, whose will reveals him
to have been a man of property in Cambridge, was descended from a Leicestershire
manorial family who, though originally of Staresmore in Staffordshire, had been lords
of Frolesworth, co. Leics., since the early sixteenth century. The pedigree printed by
John Nichols, 44 based on seventeenth-century heraldic visitations of the county,
suggests that “Thomas was born in 1585, the eldest son of George and Katherine, a
grandson of Francis Staresmore, gent. (d.1582) and Mary, and a great-grandson of John
(d.1545), who was lord of Frolesworth in right of Mary, his second wife.
On leaving Trinity in c.1623, Staresmore obtained a lay clerk’s place at King’s where
he appears for the first time in the account for the term ended at Michaelmas that
year. 45 His will which was proved by his widow on 17 May 1644, states that he was a
scholars’ servant (a part-time occupation common among Cambridge University
musicians), and not a singingman, but the fact that his name regularly appears in the
King’s College Mundum Books between 1623 and 1644 attests to his long career in the
College choir. Although another Staresmore (probably his eldest son, Thomas) was
given the reversion of a choristership at Trinity on 29 April 1640 46 and appears in the
Senior Bursar’s accounts between 1641/2 and 1648/9, long after services had been
discontinued, it seems reasonable to assume that the ‘Staersmoer’ (or ‘Stares more’)
manuscripts examined and collated during the compilation of Lbl Add. MSS 39550-54 47
probably belonged to Thomas senior.
On the general difficulties involved in attempting to compare secretary handwriting and italic signatures,
see Ian Payne: ‘The Handwriting of John Ward’, M&L, lxv (1984), 176-88, passim.
44 The History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, iv/ 1 (London, 2/1810), 190
45 King’s College Archives, Mundum Book, 1622/3, Pensiones. I am grateful to the Provost and Fellows
of King’s College for permission to cite this reference.
46 TCA Old Conclusion Book, 167
47 See Pamela Willetts: ‘Sir Nicholas Le Strange and John Jenkins’, M&L, xlii (1961), 30-43, passim.
43
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
THE LYRA-VIOL VARIATION SETS OF
WILLIAM CORKINE
GRAHAM NELSON
The English fashion for playing the viol lyra-way from tablature grew quickly during
the early years of the seventeenth century. Evidence of this vogue is confirmed by the
publication of ten sources of music for the lyra viol between 1601-1615. 1 Essentially
any viol could be tuned and played lyra-way, but it seems that the technique was most
regularly applied to a bass viol. For example, Richard Jones’s Second Booke of Songs and
Ayres (1601), the earliest printed volume, calls on the title page for a ‘Base by tablature
after the leero fashion’ which is offered as an alternative method to the lute of
accompanying the voice. 2
Following its initial use as an accompaniment to solo song, playing the viol lyra-way
entered a new phase under the guidance mainly of Alfonso Ferrabosco II, Tobias
Hume and William Corkine who together promoted and cultivated the idiom as a solo
style. Their combined talents produced dance settings, variation sets, and character and
programmatic pieces for one or more instruments. The contributions made by
Ferrabosco II and Hume are generally regarded as the more significant and tend to
overshadow those of Corkine. Yet the latter figure was the only one of the three to
have variation sets published. Indeed, apart from a set of variations on the “Cate of
Bardie” for ‘.... two Basse-Viols, the Liera-way’ found in Thomas Ford’s Musicke of
Sundrie Kindes (1607), 3 Corkine’s seven sets of variations for one instrument stand alone
in the early published repertory.
These works are divided between Corkine’s two published volumes, Ayres to Sing and
Play to the Lute and Basse Violl (1610) and The Second Book of Ayres (1612). 4 Two variation
sets are found in the first: “Whoope doe me no harme goodman” (Fv-F[2]) and
“Fortune” (F[2]v-G). Surprisingly, the composer makes no reference to them on the
title-page. The remaining five are included in his second print: “If my Complaints”
(Gv); “Come Live with Me and be My Love” (G2v-H); “Walsingham” (Hv-H2);
“Mounsiers Almaine” (H2v-1) and “The Punckes delight” (Iv). The second group is
referred to on the title-page as ‘.... divers new Descants upon old Grounds’. 5
Corkine’s description here requires closer examination. If the seven works are
viewed together, it emerges that all but one are based on so-called ‘old Grounds’. In
fact, these are ballad tunes which are employed in a melodic sense and not as repeating
ground-bass figures. Three of them appear in print for the first time, namely “Whoope
doe me ....”, “Come live with me ...... and “The Punckes delight”. Others like “Fortune”
For a complete list see F. Traficante: ‘Music for Lyra Viol: The Printed Sources’, LSJ, viii (1966), 7-24
For the full title see D. Greer (ed.): English Lute Songs 1597-1632, vii (Menston, 1970)
3 The duet is found on folio Mv-M2 of Ford’s book. See D. Greer (ed.): English Lute Songs 15971632, v
(Menston, 1971)
4 Both prints are found in D. Greer (ed.): English Lute Songs 1592-1632, iii (Menston, 1970)
5 It is worth noting that the term ‘Ground’ at this time referred to a piece constructed on a given bass,
but did not necessarily imply that it was embedded in the bass.
1
2
and “Walsingham” were extremely popular with composers of the period in dance and
variation settings. But Corkine’s variation set on “If my Complaints” stands apart from
the remainder as it is based not on a familiar ballad melody but on John Dowland’s
vocal setting of his galliard written for Digorie Piper, the Cornish sailor turned pirate. 6
[18] In nearly all, Corkine applies the melodico-harmonic variation technique, that is
to say, the main notes of the melody remain more or less constant, as do the harmony
and formal proportions of the material. The structural features which express
themselves in phrasing and length are usually the most stable elements. All seven sets
utilise the f f h f h tuning scheme.
The composer’s reference to ‘new Descants’ appears to have a two-fold meaning,
implying new variations and the influence of division style upon them. Indeed, the
works stand not only as a unique collection in themselves, but also as one of the first
attempts in print to merge lyra style with that of divisions. This stylistic amalgamation
is demonstrated most clearly in Corkine’s treatment of the melodic material. Here, lyra
style is identified by use of multiple stops, loose counterpoint, large leaps and figures
built around broken chords, that of divisions is identified by rapid scalic and arpeggio
figuration, and exploitation of the instrument’s wide tessitura.
However, the degree to which a balance is achieved between the two styles varies
somewhat within and between each of the variation sets. For example, the nine
variations on “Come live with me ...... come closer to division style. Here, the thematic
material serves as a basis for increasingly elaborate and virtuosic passage work. The first
variation, as in all Corkine’s sets, is cast in lyra style, but the eight which follow are
dominated by diminutions and punctuated occasionally by multiple stops. Intricate
scalic patterns extending over a wide range of the instrument are woven around the
model. Sometimes only the first note of each bar of the theme is retained as a
comparison of the opening bars of variations 1 and 3 reveals: 7
Other melody notes may re-appear within each variation but not necessarily within
the same rhythmic placement. Occasionally the melodic skeleton disappears, but it is
never lost for any length of time.
6
7
V. Gutman: ‘Viola bastarda - Instrument oder Diminutionspraxis?’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, xxxv
(1978), 178-209
In the lyra-viol transcriptions, the music has been notated on a single stave employing the treble
transposing clef. Time signatures have been modernised and original note values retained. The
following nominal tuning has been used: g’ -d’ -a -d -A -D.
Corkine’s set of variations on “Fortune” offers us the most sophisticated example of
the stylistic marriage between lyra and division writing. The composer divides the
popular theme into two strains (A and B):
[19]
These give rise to varied repeats in the first variation. In the second and third,
however, Corkine introduces fresh, more ornate versions of the original theme:
[20]
These are then further embellished in each reprise. The formal layout can thus be
described as follows:
Variation 1
A Ai B Bi
Variation 2
Aii Aiii Bii Biii
Variation 3
Aiv Av Biv By
Of equal interest is the composer’s handling of the two styles. In Variation 1, the
melody is supported in each strain by regular chords, but we find that this rich texture
is transformed into fast-moving divisions in each reprise. This procedure paves the way
for the introduction of Variation 2 where upward and downward scalic figures, broken
chord patterns and wide leaps hold the upper hand in both strains and their respective
repeats. The new setting of the theme in Variation 3 is mainly cast in lyra style but
diminutions assert themselves in each reprise. In other words, it appears that Variations
1 and 3 and their repeats alternate between the two styles, but divisions gain
ascendency in each strain and reprise of the central variation.
While “Come live with me ...... and “Fortune” stand essentially as virtuosic examples
of the stylistic merger, Corkine’s variations on “The Punckes delight” and “If my
Complaints” reflect a slightly different approach. Rather than use his source material as
a vehicle for technical display, the composer prefers to emphasize their inherent
character.
[21] His four variations on “The Punckes delight” promote the rhythmic vitality of
the lively jig-tune. Throughout, Corkine’s predilection is for lyra-style mannerisms,
particularly the use of double, triple and quadruple stopping on strong beats. It is
interesting to note that many of these chords lack thirds, a deliberate ploy to enhance
the piece’s unrefined rustic flavour:
When one recalls that the sixteenth-century definition of a ‘Puncke’ is a lady of illrepute, it seems that Corkine has produced in effect a novel character piece inspired by
the bawdy title of the jig-tune. 8
Corkine also strives to retain the melancholy mood of Dowland’s borrowed theme
in his variations on “If my Complaints”. Here the three-strain layout of the original
dance is retained. Each is followed by a varied repeat. That Corkine was familiar with
either the four-part vocal or solo-song version of the galliard is shown by the way he
incorporates elements of at least three of the parts into his setting. This process is
evident if the first strains of the original and the lyra-viol version are compared: 9
As in his “The Punckes delight” variations, Corkine favours a lyra-style approach.
But it is interesting to note that by embracing several parts of Dowland’s song, Corkine
has expressed in terms of lyra writing one of the main characteristics of division style,
namely that the instrument is not tied to any particular part.
The existence of such a unique collection of variation sets is surely indicative of the
high standard of viol playing in the early years of the seventeenth century. We know
that Ferrabosco II and Hume were among the leading players of their generation.
“The Punckes delight” was later included in Playford’s English Dancing Master (1651); see facsimile reprint
edited by M. Dean-Smith (London, 1957), 61. An early reference to a tune or dance of this name is
found in Taylor’s A Can Over the Water (1615): ‘ ... for his action he eclipseth quite, the ligge of Garlik,
or the Puncks delight’; see J. Baskerville: The Elizabethan Jig, (Chicago, 1929), 294
9 For a complete transcription of Corkine’s lyra-viol version see T. Dart and W. Coates (eds.): Jacobean
Consort Music’, Musica Britannica, ix, 201, revised edition (Stainer and Bell, London, 1971)
8
Although no conclusive evidence has yet been discovered, it is conceivable that
Corkine was also a gifted executant of the viol. Despite the fact that his name is not
linked with any particular instrument, a document recently discovered tells us of his
participation in a concert with John Dowland at the Middle Temple on Candlemas 1612
(new style, 1613). 10 Corkine’s appearance at this location in company with his illustrious
partner surely confirms his position as an established performing musician of the
period. 11
The reputation of English musicians as players of and composers for the viol
attracted considerable attention on the continent. Andre Maugars, the French diplomat
and gamba player, spent some years studying in England during the reign of James I
and subsequently became a great admirer of the tradition of English viol playing and, in
particular, lyra-way:
Every country excels in something .... the English play the viol perfectly. I admit my own
debt to them and that I imitate their chordal playing. 12
Writing of him in 1687, Rousseau refers to Maugars’s exceptional ability in
improvising on the viol, a skill which he probably acquired in England:
.... on a theme of five or six notes given to him on the spur of the moment, he could
vary it in innumerable different ways until he had done everything that was possible to
do with it, using chords as well as divisions. 13
This description confirms that the art of improvising variations in a mixed style on a
simple theme was a popular pastime among the more able players of the period.
Therefore, it would seem that Corkine’s rare sets of printed variations played lyra-way
stand essentially as models of what was done in performance and not as definitive
works in themselves. Perhaps Corkine, like Hume, wished to demonstrate that the viol
was capable of performing similar musical functions to the lute, that is to say, it could
offer a full lyra-style texture crossed with divisions. The works do serve, however, as an
important link with Simpson’s The DivisionViolist (1659), the first systematic method for
teaching improvisation on the instrument.
In the light of his significant achievement, we should re-consider our evaluation of
Corkine particularly when compared with his contemporaries Ferrabosco II and Hume,
and acknowledge more fully his importance as a composer of works that provide
See P. Frank: ‘A new Dowland document’, MT, cxxiv (1983), 15-16
Dowland must also have been convinced of Corkine’s competence as a composer, otherwise he would
not have willingly agreed to the latter’s use of “If my Complaints” for his variation set. It is
interesting to note that Dowland had disapproved strongly of the publisher William Barley
including some of his lute pieces in A New Booke of Tabliture (1596) without prior consent. One
year later, Dowland complained of this irresponsible act in The First Booke of Songes and Ayres:
‘There have been divers Lute-lessons of mine lately printed without my knowledge, false and
imperfect’.
12 E. Thoinon (ed.): Andre Maugars, Response faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique d’Italie
(Rome, 1639) avec notes et eclarissement r (Paris, 1685 reprinted London, 196508 cited in C. Rabson:
Lyra-way on the Viols and Violins (M.A. diss., State University of New York College at Potsdam,
1972), 42
13 J. Rousseau: Traité de la Viole (Paris, 1687), cited in Rabson: op. cit., 42
10
11
insight into the improvisatory style and ability of the Jacobean school of lyra-viol
composers and players.
10. See P. Frank: ‘A new Dowland document’, MT, cxxiv (1983), 15-16
11. Dowland must also have been convinced of Corkine’s competence as a composer, otherwise he
would not have willingly agreed to the latter’s use of “If my Complaints” for his variation set. It is
interesting to note that Dowland had disapproved strongly of the publisher William Barley including
some of his lute pieces in A New Booke of Tabliture (1596) without prior consent. One year later,
Dowland complained of this irresponsible act in The First Booke of Songes and Ayres: ‘There have been
divers Lute-lessons of mine lately printed without my knowledge, false and imperfect’.
12. E. Thoinon (ed.): Andre Maugars, Response faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique
d’Italie (Rome, 1639) avec notes et eclarissement r (Paris, 1685 reprinted London, 196508 cited in C.
Rabson: Lyra-way on the Viols and Violins (M.A. diss., State University of New York College at
Potsdam, 1972), 42
13. J. Rousseau: Traité de la Viole (Paris, 1687), cited in Rabson: op. cit., 42
[24]
ON PRAETORIUS AND ENGLISH VIOL
PITCHES
EPHRAIM SEGERMAN
In his article ‘Praetorius and English Viol Pitch’ 1 John Catch interprets
Praetorius’s comments on the tuning of English viols in sets to mean that
they were tuned with the lowest strings at D, A and E at either
Cammerthon (a’=c.430 Hz, slightly lower than modern pitch) or a pitch
standard a tone lower. He assumes modern sizes for the English viols and
that English size names were shifted by one with respect to German size
names. I will contend that i) English and German viol sizes and size
names were the same, and ii) Praetorius should be interpreted as meaning
that, though the English assumed higher nominal pitches and normally
tuned to higher actual pitches than the Germans did, an occasional
practice was to tune down to the German pitches when only viols were
involved.
The relevant passage in Praetorius is as follows, using Catch’s
translation which divides the original text into sections: 2
i) The viole da gamba have six strings, tuned in fourths, with a third in the
middle, like the six-choired lutes.
ii) The English, when they play together among themselves, set them all
sometimes a fourth, sometimes indeed a fifth lower,
iii) so that they reckon and hold the lowest string of the small bass in D, of the
tenor and alto in A, and of the discant in E
iv) otherwise each one is tuned a fifth lower (reckoning by the Cammerton) as
may be seen above in the Table, namely the bass in GG; the tenor and alto in D;
the discant in A.
v) And that tuning gives sweeter, grander and nobler harmony than if they are
kept at the normal pitch.
The contending interpretations of words in the passage are:
1
2
Praetorius
Catch’s interpretation
My interpretation
ii) among themselves
sometimes... sometimes
lower (than?)
in a set
always either... or
higher (than German pitch)
with viols only
at times either ...or
lower (than usual
English pitch)
iv) otherwise
by comparison, in German
practice
but when the
English tuned
down
v) that tuning
the tuning a fifth higher
the last-mentioned
tuning
Chelys, xv (1986), 26-32
M. Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum II, De Organographia, (1619), 44; this passage is in the
translation by J.R. Catch: op.cit., 27
the normal pitch
the German pitch
the normal
English pitch
There are two strong reasons, each one sufficient in itself, why my
interpretation is to be preferred over Catch’s from a scholarly point of
view. First, Catch assumes that Praetorius erroneously wrote ‘lower’ for
‘higher’ in ii) quoted above without having any independent evidence for
this assumption, while my interpretation [25] makes sense without any such
assumption of error. Secondly, Catch concludes that the English tuning
which ‘gives sweeter, grander and nobler harmony than if they are kept at
the normal pitch’ is higher than the ‘normal’ pitch. This interpretation
conflicts with Praetorius’s statement earlier in Chapter II that ‘the deeper
the pitch of sackbutts, curtals, bassanelli, shawms or bass viols, the more
solemn and stately they will sound’. 3 My conclusion, that the English tuning
referred to is lower than the ‘normal’ pitch, is consistent with Praetorius’s
other statement.
It would be useful to discuss further how Praetorius’s German tunings
and English tunings fit with the sizes of the viols. Let us consider all of the
bowed instruments Praetorius discussed. We can measure their string stops
(i.e. vibrating string lengths) from Praetorius’s scaled drawings. Praetorius
also gave their various nominal tunings, as well as the pitch standard he was
using (from his depicted set of pitch pipes it has been deduced that it was
a’=c.430 Hz). We thus have both string stops and tuning frequencies for all
of his bowed instruments and can make some generalizations about the
overall ranges of bowed gut strings. We expect, from both theory and
practical experience, that the highest pitch one can safely go to without
breaking is inversely proportional to the string stop, and does not depend
on diameter or tension. Similarly, the lowest pitch does not depend on
diameter or tension, but taking inharmonicity into account, it varies by five
semitones for each four fret-lengths of string stop. 4 This leads to a total
range that encompasses all of Praetorius’s bowed instruments, which is two
octaves and a fifth at a string stop of 80 cm., and two octaves and a major
third at a string stop of 40 cm. His bass viol is at the bottom of its range
and his tenor and treble viols are, at a semitone higher than the bottom of
their ranges. The top of the ranges for these viols is c sharp’ for the bass, f
sharp’ for the tenor and c” for the treble viol at Praetorius’s pitch standard.
If English viol nominal pitches were as Praetorius described them, and
the string stops of English and German viols were the same, the normal
pitch could not have been any higher than a minor third above that noted
by Praetorius (i.e. c” compared to a’ for the treble viol). But we have
evidence to suggest that Praetorius’s report of English viol nominal pitches
is a tone too high for the tenor and treble viols. His impression was that
their top strings were at a’ and e”, while all the English evidence (except for
Talbot’s report of tenor viol tuning, which was probably derived from
Mersenne rather than a first-hand English source) is that they were
3
4
M. Praetorius: op. cit., 14; this passage is in the translation by D.Z. Crookes (Clarendon
Press, 1986), 31
A full discussion of this is given in my article: ‘A closer look at pitch ranges of gut
strings’, FoMRHI Q, xl (July 1986), Comm. 632, 45-56
considered to be g’ and d”. Direct evidence survives from the second half
of the seventeenth century, for example in Playford (Skill of Musick, 1674
and previous editions) . and Mace (Musick’s Monument, 1676). As for early
seventeenth-century evidence, Robinson in The Schoole of Musicke (1603)
implies these tunings in his chapter ‘Rules to instruct you to sing’, where he
presents vocal lines with unison viol parts in tablature. Viols in d’, g’ and d”
are apparently called for. In the bandora-set tuning found in Tobias Hume’s
The First Part of Ayres ... (1605) the treble viols are tuned an octave above
the [26] bass viols. Since it is most likely that these instruments were also
used in the normal tuning without restringing, and that the retuning
procedure used for treble and bass viols was the same, normal tuning was
also probably an octave apart.
A possible scenario for Praetorius’s error is that he only investigated the
lowest strings of each viol (his report was only of the lowest strings) and
that of the bass viol had been tuned to the common ‘double cee-fa-ut’ sixth
string tuning, but the information he had was that the bass had a D nominal
tuning. The other possible scenario is that the only hard information he had
related to the bass viol and he just assumed that tunings of English treble
and tenor viols relative to the bass mirrored German practice.
The evidence of surviving English viols strongly supports the view that
their sizes were essentially the same as those Praetorius depicted. Many
trebles and tenors of Praetorius’s sizes survive; they must be accepted as
valid evidence and have to fit into any hypothesis of what the sizes were.
Extant bass viols which are much smaller than Praetorius’s bass (klein bass)
do not conflict with this same-size hypothesis if we identify them as small
non-set solo bass viols; there is evidence for the wide use of such
instruments. In contrast, under the hypothesis that modern sizes
correspond with what were used in England then, the surviving bass viols
fit, and the Praetorius-size tenor viols are interpreted as division or lyra
viols. But the many Praetorius-size treble viols that survive can only be
fitted into the modern-size hypothesis by assuming that they were alto viols;
yet such instruments are never mentioned in contemporary documents.
Praetorius-size bass viols and modern-size treble and tenor viols have not
survived. The weight of evidence is in favour of Praetorius sizes. In this
discussion, we have not brought to bear the strongest evidence, that of
Talbot, which will be discussed in another paper.
What then were the actual nominal tunings of English viols that
Praetorius did not mention? When Playford in Skill of Musick described the
tuning of viols in sets, he wrote of the bass (and implied for the others) that
the first string was tuned as high as it would safely go. From Praetorius’s
information we can conclude that this set of pitches would have been d’, g’
and d” at a pitch standard about a tone below his standard or modern (the
precision involved here is not high enough to distinguish between a’=430
Hz and 440 Hz). This standard is most probably what Mace was referring to
when he mentioned ‘consort pitch’. If it was the normal pitch for viols early
in the seventeenth century as well, which is very likely, then the special
practice when viols were playing alone that Praetorius commented on
involved tuning down two or three semitones, or indeed a tone further.
The pitch standard a tone below modern has a much better claim to be
the standard for the early music movement than the current standard a
semitone higher than this. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
this pitch was commonly used for ‘serious’ music throughout Europe
except for Protestant [27] German-speaking countries. 5 It was called ‘Ton
de Chapell’ in France and ‘choir pitch’ in the local languages in Italy, 6
Switzerland 7 and Catholic German-speaking countries, as well as ‘consort
pitch’ in England. This standard was replaced by higher standards in the
eighteenth century at different times in different places. It was still Roman
pitch in 1800 8 and ‘concert pitch’ in England into the second half of the
eighteenth century. 9 The instrument-making centres of South Germany and
Italy produced lutes and viols of sizes that were used universally, but were
most appropriate for this standard. From a pitch point of view, the
Germany of Praetorius and Bach was rather out of step with the main
cultural centres in the rest of Europe.
The analysis of non-English pitches is in my ‘On German, Italian and French pitch standards
in the 17th and 18th centuries’, FoMRHI Q, xxx (Jan. 1983), comm. 442, 27-39, amplified
by ‘Eighteenth century German and French pitches’, FoMRHI Q, xlii (Jan. 1986), Comm.
683,62-68
6 For example G. Diruta: Il transilvanio, 2da paste, Libro terzo (1622), 4
7 Two physicists measured pitch in Basel, D. Bernoulli in 1742 and L. Euler in 1727. Their
reports were in Latin but we assume that the name of the standard that they mention
reflected local vernacular usage.
8 C. Gervasone: La scuola della musica (1800)
9 The physicist Taylor measured the pitch in 1713. W. Tans’ur in A New Musical Grammar
and Dictionary ... third edition (1756), 83 mentioned that English concert pitch was a
tone lower than that of Lombardy, which was like modern pitch.
5
[28]
FANTASY AND MUSIC IN SIXTEENTH- AND
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
GRAHAM STRAHLE
Having started as an enquiry into the nature of the instrumental fantasia in England,
this thesis developed into a broad-ranging investigation concerning the musical
significances of fantasy theory during the Renaissance and Baroque periods in England.
The author became aware of an impressively vast literature belonging to those periods
on the meaning and creative implications of fantasy in the fields of philosophy,
psychology, rhetoric and poetic theory, and was able to show from a wide study of
musical sources that fantasy had a direct bearing on musical aesthetics, theory and
composition. Specifically, this offered the key to a fuller understanding of that often
complex and enigmatic instrumental composition called the 'fantasia'. The thesis shows
that the English type differed in many important respects from its continental
counterparts, chiefly because English fantasy concepts developed along different lines,
usually being connected with poetry and the affections. Thus the most interesting
aspects of the English fantasia, along with many poetic and some other musical forms
(such as the sonnet and madrigal), is the fact that it became a direct expression of all
that creative fantasy stood for in the artistically brilliant Elizabethan and Jacobean
periods.
The initial premise of the work is that the fantasia, as viewed throughout all
European countries during the Renaissance, was such an extremely diverse and
changeable form that it is impossible to define according to any fixed set of criteria.
This fact alone separates it from most other compositional forms of the Renaissance,
except for the ricercar, with which it is closely related. The fantasia can either be a very
free, improvisatory composition or a highly strict 'exercise' in applied counterpoint.
Also, the ensemble repertory often shows major unconformities with the solo repertory
because, like the imitative ricercar, it is typically modelled after polyphonic vocal forms
such as the motet and madrigal. It is paradoxical that, as one of the principal
instrumental genres, the fantasia relied heavily on vocal music when it was supposed to
be one of the freest of all compositional genres. A not unrelated problem is that there
exist numerous cases when the title 'fantasia' is applied to other compositions such as
the ricercar, preambel, carminum, preludium, hortus and tiento, and later on was
sometimes interchanged with voluntary, automaton, capriccio, canzona and fuga.
Analysis of literary documents mentioning 'fantasia' from the late fifteenth to the late
sixteenth centuries, including the theoretical writings of Milan, Sebastiani, Doni,
Bermudo, Santa Maria, Zarlino and others, shows that the word referred in the first
place not to a fixed form but more generally to any type of musical invention which
stemmed from the composer's imagination. This fact [29] accounts for the many
difficulties in treating it, at least in this early period and most probably in later ones as
well, as a specific and definable musical term. Since all discussions of creative
imagination or'fantasy' (this was the preferred word) were closely bound to Classical
philosophy, the study of fantasy theory starts with Plato and Aristotle, both of whom
exercised an influence on nearly all later writers, and moves on to Cicero and
Quintilian, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, to the Renaissance and Baroque periods of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fantasy theory was an important area in a great
number of philosophical writings in England and was a major concern for Thomas
Elyot, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Obadiah Walker and Peter Sterry, and also in
poetic theory (including such writers as Stephen Hawes, George Puttenham and John
Davies) and the affections (including Thomas Wright, Edward Reynoldes, Timothy
Bright and Robert Burton). Interest in the philosophical, psychological and literary
aspects of fantasy occurred much later in England and France than in Italy, and quickly
assumed a central place in creative doctrine in all the arts including music. Its
importance in Elizabethan England was unparalleled elsewhere and only began to
diminish with the onset of the new, rationalist-empiricist thinking which characterized
the later 'Age of Reason'. (This sheds light on why the fantasia later ceased to be a
viable form.)
In ancient Greece, musical fantasy meant the capacity of a musician to imagine
sounds in his mind to enable him to animate properly his vocal chords and thereby
emit a pure sound. In the Renaissance the same concept became associated with the
magical and universal power of music of the spheres and the psychic medium of air as
it affects the individual (in the writings of Ficino and Agrippa). In England as in France
it was almost exclusively associated with the passions and their power over the soul.
English writers contributed little to the theory of fantasy but the subject provoked a
great amount of discussion, with sharply polarized views emerging on the place of
fantasy in art. Most of the arguments raised in favour and against fantasy in music were
the same as those pertaining to literary criticism. In particular, the notions of 'musical
flights of fancy', 'formal fantasy', 'musical fury', and variety, were directly borrowed
from literary fantasy. More generally, there evolved a fantasy ideal which was responsible for propagating the increasingly popular, humanist notion that art must entertain
as well as instruct. Looking at it in the widest possible way, the idea of fantasy shows
itself to be a new and vital force in the underlying process of artistic liberation which
underscores the English Renaissance.
In musical composition, the idea of fantasy was closely connected with the
Renaissance view that art must seek to represent the ideals of nature and man by
conveying images. These images are extensions in the composer's mind of real
phenomena and form the basis of his imaginative process. They are expressed as topoi,
that is, specific musical patterns which carry extra-musical associations, and they lend
even a textless composition a more-or-less definable and recognizable meaning. This
general principle governed much instrumental and so-called [30] free, 'abstract'
composition of the period, including stylized dance music, voluntaries and those
fantasias cast in the madrigal mould. At another level the idea of variety, originally
connected with poetic fantasy, shows itself in both vocal and instrumental music,
especially in terms of the mood changes and overall structure of madrigals, canzonets,
medleys, capriccios, fantasias and voluntaries. Indeed, the constant search for variety in
madrigal composition proved the strongest influence on the fantasia in its most
formative phase. Later on the emphasis shifted in a subtle fashion. When variety is
pushed to extreme and all symmetry, balance and predictability are lost in the music,
fantasy expresses itself in terms of strangeness and the bizarre. This is convincingly
demonstrated in music for the Jacobean and Restoration theatre, especially in such
masques as Brittania Triumphans, The Triumph of Peace, and The Tempest, in which the novel
aesthetic of Baroque fantasy comes to the fore. Thus 'fantastic' in music of the later
period implies irregularity of melody, unpredictability of rhythm and strangeness of
harmony.
In attempting to place the fantasia in this larger perspective, it is at once apparent
that in England, as elsewhere, the word itself 'fantasia' (alternatively 'fantasy' or 'fancy',
a contraction which interestingly did not occur in other European languages) does not
refer necessarily to a fixed species of composition. As a study of commentaries by
Morley, Christopher Simpson, Mace, North and others shows, the fantasy 'genre'
bestowed on the composer considerable freedom to do what he liked with a minimum
of constraints. Variety of both compositional procedure and musical form, the
borrowing of devices from other compositional species, and perhaps most important of
all the pre-eminence of the composer's own volition and will - these then were the main
characteristics of the English fantasia.
Looking closely at the fantasia's origins and remarkable development in England
confirms this interpretation. Its initial cultivation in the middle years of the sixteenth
century probably owed considerably to the particular enthusiasm of Ferrabosco I while
he was stationed in England. His rather inconsistent and unconventional approach (by
Italian standards) gave English musicians a number of different alternatives for
composing fantasias, and what quickly proved to be the most popular for the consort
type was to incorporate a variety of mood changes so as to mimic the effect of the
contemporary madrigal and lyric, `fantasy' verse. Robert White and William Byrd were
two early figures who seem to have helped transform the consort fantasia from an
obscure, anonymous motet-style and probably vocal composition to a more-or-less
distinct, varied and interesting one with occasional secular elements, written primarily
for viols. With its potential released by its emancipation from the liturgical context and
with a new generation of young and progressive composers, the consort fantasia
blossomed and lost its last remaining links with its continental ricercar-style cousin.
The middle period fantasia relies greatly on the use of musical images, that is, borrowed
themes and topoi, to provide quite literally the starting 'point' for the [31] imaginative
process. The fantasias of Ferrabosco II, Coprario, Lupo, Ward and Gibbons are
vocally-inspired free inventions which take the listener on an imaginative journey often
beginning with a familiar theme, hence the significance of the 'parody fantasia'. In a
slightly different way, the 'madrigal fantasia' (to be differentiated from a fantasia which
is really a written out madrigal) is composed around a 'phantom' text because its use of
madrigalian devices evokes a series of images in the listener's mind. In the later period,
from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, the fantasia became increasingly
instrumental in idiom and became an alamode composition through the impact of the
Baroque fantasy aesthetic. In the works of William Lawes, Locke and Purcell, it
asserted itself as an extremely bold and adventurous composition with unprecedented
contrast of form.
Three of the most important composers of the period,John Dowland, William Byrd
and Thomas Morley, receive detailed study in light of the preceding analysis. Although
as fantasia composers they are less typical than others, it can be seen that the idea of
fantasy penetrated deeply into their musical conscious nesses, and it should not be
surprising that they responded in very different and personal ways. Melancholic fantasy,
a much loved theme in contemporary lyric and some meditative poetry, had a particular
relevance to the music of Dowland. His interest in its artistic possibilities, at a time
when there existed a cult for melancholia in Elizabethan England, is demonstrated by
his choice of verse for his 1600 set of songs. The seven lachrynnae pavans, through
repetition of their tear-laden head-motif and their unbroken mood of dolorous
resignation, are the artistic equivalent of the 'melancholy of fixedness' as expounded by
Reynoldes. Dowland's rhapsodic lute fantasias find an interesting literary parallel in the
intensely melancholic poems of Nicholas Breton (foremost of the literary 'fantasticks'),
and it is probable that Dowland used them as a creative point of departure. Byrd chose
a wealth of fantasy verse for his song publications of 1588, 1589 and 1611, including
some by one of England's most distinguished fantasists, Thomas Watson. The changes
to be observed in his vocal writing in these publications, from his early consort-song
style to a more varied and expressive mode, are paralleled in his canon of consort
fantasias, for they progressively move in the direction of poetic variety and secular
entertainment. In a more open way, fantasy for Morley was the cornerstone of his new
and radical view that music should be a pursuit which, in all its facets, is accessible to
the average musician. He developed a doctrine of inventive fantasy, drawn from many
different sources including the mathematical concept of ars combinatoria, which formed
the basis of his new aesthetic of 'light music'. The obvious originality of his own
approach to the fantasia stemmed from his conviction that the form should, on account
of its creative implications, exist at the forefront of this aesthetic development.
Although he acknowledged that fantasias were traditionally 'grave music', he himself
preferred to compose ones which were 'light'.
One of the obvious points to come out of this study is that the subject of [32]
fantasy, particularly creative fantasy, was vast, embracing many different disciplines but
ultimately revealing a network of fascinating links which unite them. It shows that
fantasy theory was uniquely important in England, not only in the sphere of music and
particularly in relation to the fantasia, but in artistic thought generally. Indeed, if the
later seventeenth century onwards can be called the 'Age of Reason' (Thomas Paine),
then it would not be out of place to call the earlier period the 'Age of Fantasy'. To
conclude, it is hoped that this avenue of research will unlock further secrets and offer a
wider scope for an alternative perspective of music of the period. The work ends with
three appendices, one giving an etymology of 'fantasy', the second giving fifty thematic
concordances in the English fantasia repertory, and the third comprising an edition of
two as yet unpublished five-part fantasias by Morley.
Summary by the author.
The above thesis was submitted to the University of Adelaide in May, 1987, and accepted for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in November.
[33]
JAMES TALBOT’S VIOLS
JOHN R. CATCH
With the revival of interest in viol-consort playing from the beginning of our century
there grew up a broad consensus on the right sizes for the instruments (see Table I). 1
Most viols nowadays are of these orthodox sizes, which seem to have been based on a
conspectus of the sizes of surviving viols and just possibly on a thread of tradition
surviving through the nineteenth century. 2 However, the few historical documents
which allow of a quantitative correlation of measurements with functional names all
refer to the bigger Praetorius sizes, and have led to the suggestion that these sizes were
in fact the norm (see Table I). 3 The scarcity of surviving 80 cm. viols leas been
supposed to be the consequence of destruction or ‘cutting down’ to smaller sizes. 4 It
would certainly be wrong to assume that surviving viols are a representative sample of
those which once existed. The problem is a perplexing one, bound up with the equally
perplexing problem of historic pitches. The difference of size between the two
hypothetical families is, we may note, roughly that which might be expected for a
difference of pitch of a whole tone, but historical evidence is silent as to whether that
was their raison d’être.
This article examines in some detail only one of the historical documents, the notes
made by James Talbot in the 1690s. 5 Readers of the published transcripts must be
warned that they are not complete, and that they may give an impression of tidiness and
coherence which is not borne out by the original papers. Talbot was not an expert on
bowed strings. He never completed his collection of primary data and never reviewed it
critically. His tuning diagrams in particular are not individually associated with his
measurements of the instruments. They are quite separate, and the two can be
correlated only by the names of the instruments. Unfortunately, consistency of
nomenclature is not one of Talbot’s strong points. Comments may sometimes be
associated with measurements, sometimes not; but even when they are we can never be
sure that they are indeed related.
Much of the relevant material to this article is preserved in a fairly tidy notebook of
thirty-two numbered pages, covering bowed and plucked strings, with usually one item
N. Dolmetsch: The Viola da Gamba (1962); A.H. König: Die Viola da Gamba (1985)
J. Rutledge: ‘Towards a history of the viol in the 19th century’, EM, xii/3 (1984), 328-36
3 M. Praetorius: Theatrum Instrumentorum (1620), Table xx; C. Simpson: The Division Viol (London,
1667), facsimile reprint (1955), 1; James Talbot’s manuscript, GB-Och MS 1187; R. Donington:
James Talbot’s Manuscript - II. Bowed Instruments’, GSJ, iii (1950), 27-45; T.B.: The Compleat
Musick-Master (1722)
4 ‘Cutting-down’ would leave tell-tale evidence. I know of only one orthodox-sized bass which
may show such evidence and think it a doubtful case.
5 See GB-Och Ms 1187. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the courtesy of the Governing Body and of the
Librarian of Christ Church in making this manuscript available to me. See also A. Baines: James
Talbot’s Manuscript - I. Wind Instruments’, GSJ, i (1948), 9-26; R. Donington: James Talbot’s
Manuscript - Bowed Strings’, Chelys, vi (1975-6); R. Unwin: ‘An English Writer on Music: James
Talbot 1664-1708’, GSJ, xl (1987), 53
1
2
to a page. The manuscript opens with a classified scheme which is obviously a fair,
copy. The part which concerns us is:
[34]
[35] Note that in this scheme ‘bass viol’ and ‘bass violin’ are generic and not specific
terms. There is a double bass viol but no double bass violin; and there is a bass violin
with 6 strings, which is odd.
The notebook as a whole is certainly not a fair copy of existing information, but was
used to record material as it became available. The items are in no particular order and
Talbot seems to have entered the page numbers into the scheme as the pages were
used, I would suppose more or less progressively, but the entries are not entirely
methodical.
Page 6 was headed ‘Treble Viol’, but this was later crossed through and ‘Cittern’
substituted to carry over information on this instrument from page 5. Talbot does not
give a first-hand description of the treble viol, although he notes elsewhere that
Gottfried Finger provided one for him; nor is there any first-hand evidence for an alto
viol.
Page 7 is headed ‘Division Viol’ and detailed measurements are tabulated (see Table
II, no. 1). 6 It is an orthodox size. Page 8 was first headed ‘Bass Viol’; ‘Consort’ was later
prefixed to it. There is then this note: 7
NB. that the Consort Viol is longer than the Division Viol 1’ in the Neck and Body: it is
broader at the top of the Belly [figure illegibly corrected; Z/3’?] & in the sides %z’: at the
bottom 1’: its Bow 3’ or 2½’.
If this note is applied to the division viol on page 7 it gives us a consort bass (see
Table III, no. 1) which is again an orthodox size. Many such viols survive. If the note is
applied to the Praetorius consort bass which we shall find on page 28 (see Table II, no.
5) we get a very big division viol (see Table III, no. 2). It appears that Talbot is giving
one functional name to viols differing greatly in measurement.
There is nothing more about viols on page 8. The next example is on page 25,
headed ‘Lyra Viol’, which begins with this note:
Lyra Viol bears the proportion to the Division Viol, viz. it is shorter in the Body and Neck
1’: in the sides ½’: it is narrower at the top of the Belly ½’: at the bottom 1’: its Bow 30’.
The tabulated measurements which follow are those of a Praetorius size (see Table
II, no. 2), not shorter than the division viol on page 7 but altogether bigger. Applying
the note to the measurements on the same page we get a big division viol (see Table
III, no. 3). Applied to the orthodox division viol of page 7 it gives us a smaller lyra viol
(see Table III, no. 6). Once again, one name - two sizes; but Talbot seems not to be
aware of this, referring to the division viol or the consort bass as if each were a defined
size.
I have adjusted the belly length because Talbot’s detailed figures suggest that his measurement includes the
overhang of the tail-piece.
7 This and similar notes may be construed in various ways. I have adopted the reading’-longer I inch in
the whole neck, including the pegbox, and 1 inch in the body.’ I have taken the bridge to stand at
0.54 of the length of the belly from the neck joint. This reading seems most in accord with
comparative viol sizes. Other interpretations will alter details in the deduced figures but not I
believe my general conclusions. I follow Talbot’s manuscript in using one stroke’ for ‘inch’ and two
strokes “ for ‘½ inch’.
6
Page 26, headed ‘Double Bass Viol’, begins with a note:
Has the following Proportions to the division Viol. Longer in Body 1 Foot: in Neck 6’:
Wid2r in upper part of Belly 6’ in lower 10’: Deeper at rimms 3’, under Bridge 4’. Lengths
of Bow 36’. All viols but this carry 7 Frets.
The tabulated measurements follow (see Table II, no. 3). Donington and others [36]
have long since pointed out that the dimensions are not those of any viol but are close
to those of the common orchestral double bass. The note, although on the same page,
cannot refer to the measurements. The result would be an incredible division viol (see
Table III, no. 4). But if we apply it to Talbot’s division viol on page 7 of the manuscript
we get a size well suited to a quint violone in GG, a fifth below the ordinary consort
bass viol (see Table III no. 5). Talbot gives exactly this tuning elsewhere for the
‘German’ six-stringed double bass viol. Another note, ‘Double Bass Viol Violone - It
has six strings 5 notes lower than Bass Violin’, followed by the same GG tuning,
confirms his knowledge of such a quint bass, the term ‘Bass Violin’ here being
obviously a misnomer for the consort bass viol.
Yet another brief scrawl -
- suggests that Talbot was uncertain about the right names; perhaps, for him, all
double basses were viols.
I can find nothing in Talbot’s manuscript referring to a full size violone of 16’ pitch,
one octave below the consort bass. Talbot’s pages 27-28 clearly show tenor and bass
viols of Praetorius sizes (see Table II, nos. 4-5).
Page 32, headed ‘Bass Violin’, is amplified in the classified scheme as’- with 4 str.
Engl’. We shall be unwise to equate this with the large cello tuned down to BB flat
which the term means to us today. Talbot indeed gives this tuning, and not the modern
cello tuning, elsewhere in the manuscript, but it is surely cribbed from an earlier writer.
The continued use of that tuning in the 1690s is very unlikely. 8 Talbot’s ‘bass violin’
(see Table II, no. 6) is doubtless a violin, but is shorter in the body and in the string
length than a representative cello, with a short neck and fingerboard, but with a pegbox unusually long for just four pegs. The fingerboard is 4.45 cm. (13/ 4 ”) wide at the
nut, half as wide again as that of a cello would be. It suggests to me a small fivestringed cello or ‘violoncello piccolo’, with the tuning C - G - d - a - e’. The instrument
was supplied by a Frenchman, James Paisible, and Talbot may have put the page
number in his scheme against the adjoining item by mistake.
This tentative identification of Talbot’s page 32 has particular relevance to our next
problem:
Lewis has a Bass Violin (made for Lord Abergenny) which has 6 strings: its neck is
somewhat shorter than that of usual B. Violin to bear a Pitch: he says the treble string is
of the same sound and size with the 3d of B. Violin (or B. Viol) it is louder than either.
8
I believe Purcell in his church and theatre music never goes lower than the cello C. See also P. Allsop:
‘The Role of the Stringed Bass as a Continuo Instrument in Italian Seventeenth Century
Instrumental Music’, Chelys, viii (1978-79), 32
And tuned B. Viol way. [Note: strings are numbered from highest to lowest throughout
the MS.]
Donington’s intuitive feeling was that this ‘most bewildering’ statement implied a
small violone. 9 ‘6 strings - tuned B. Viol way’ certainly denotes a viol, not a violin. ‘3d
of B. Violin (or B. Viol) it is louder than either’ means that Lewis was comparing it
with two different instruments, not with one under two different [37]
No two of these have ‘3d’ strings (from the top) of the same sound.
It is indeed Talbot’s normal practice to number from the top down, but
characteristically there are at least two places where he has reckoned from the bottom
up, and that way round the ‘3d’ strings are the same for bass viol and for BB flat bass
violin. The consequences of this assumption are however unacceptable. We would have
to assume the BB flat tuning in the 1690s; Lewis’s bass violin would be a very large
violone in CC, a tone lower than the full-size violone in DD; and there would be an
even larger and lower-pitched one which was, for Lewis, the ‘usual B. Violin’. I cannot
believe that.
There must be an error in the number ‘3d’, and the only alternative which makes any
sense is ‘2nd’. 10 These are the same for bass viol and ‘violoncello piccolo’, so that the
treble string of Lewis’s instrument would be a; it would be a small violone in AA, a
tone higher and therefore ‘somewhat shorter’ than the German double bass viol in GG.
This is the most plausible answer I can offer, and is at any rate a reasoned argument
which supports Donington’s intuitive feeling in 1950.
Two further points in Talbot’s manuscript are worth a brief mention. One is a
partially illegible note, not reproduced by Donington (the words in parentheses are
uncertain):
in low[est] Basses [mixed] with Copper or [Silver] Wire in lowest[
Viol.
] of Bass Violin or
This note presumably refers to overspun bass strings. The second point concerns
the body proportions (width/length) of Talbot’s division, tenor and consort bass viols
(see Table II, nos. 1, 4 and 5). They are all substantially wider in proportion (by 9-13%)
than the ‘classical’ contemporary outlines by for example Barak Norman and Richard
9
See R. Donington: GSJ, iii, 40
‘ 1st’ would equate Lewis’s viol with a GG double bass, which would not call for special comment;
nor would the neck need to be ‘shorter to bear a pitch’.
10
Meares. This could provide a clue to their possible provenance. The ‘double bass viol’
(see Table II, no. 3) is by contrast a more slender outline than a Barak Norman and it is
possible to see in the measurements something like the ‘violin’ shape of the well-known
Maggini violone which Mabel Dolmetsch used to play.
[38] Summary
It is very interesting that Talbot’s notes reveal Praetorius-sized viols in England in
the 1690s, but there is evidence in them for smaller sizes of consort viols as well,
without any indication that I can see that either the one or the other was the more
commonly used.
Talbot’s account of the bass violin is a significant parallel. I do not think that anyone
would seriously suppose that the small instrument of his page 32 was representative of
the bass violin or cello used by Henry Purcell, but he gives us no indication that it was
not, just calling it ‘bass violin’. Talbot’s pages 27-8 are a comparable case. They existed,
but we should be wary of assuming them to be typical. As Charles Mould wrote twenty
years ago, studying Talbot on the harpsichord, ‘his discrepancies must cause all his
work to be treated with the utmost caution.’ 11 To address the problem of viol sizes in
seventeenth-century England we must take other evidence into account, notably
evidence on pitches. Talbot regrettably has nothing to tell us about that. It is a subject
which bristles with difficulties. Some essential piece of historical evidence is surely
missing. 12 I certainly do not know the answers.
11
12
C. Mould: James Talbot’s Manuscript - VII. Harpsichord’, GSJ, xxi (1968), 40
P. Holman has suggested that the pitch used at the Oxford Music School in the 1660s was 460+; see
`Thomas Baltzar (?1631-1663), the “Incomperable Lubicer on the Violin” ‘, Chelys, xiii (1984), 18.
It is hard to believe that Praetorius-sized viols would have been practical at so high a pitch. It
seems very high even for Simpson’s 76 cm. division viol, yet Simpson says nothing about high or
low pitch. Mace does, in vague terms, and yet in advertising his table organ he tells us nearly
everything about it except its pitch; see Musick’s Monument (London, 1676), 242-4.
[39]
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
Dear Editors,
On a recent visit to the United Kingdom I discovered that the sole part-book (a Tenor
volume) of William Byrd’s Liber primus sacrarum cantionum quinque vocum (London, 1589) in
the Archive Library of King’s College, University of London, at shelfmark PM8, includes
some manuscript folios bound at the rear of the volume where there is some music which
has not been discussed in print as far as I am aware. The music was probably copied in the
late Elizabethan period and the copyist of these works is unknown to me.
The music on these folios comprises nine numbered parts, though the piece at number
9 is recopied in a transposed version at the foot of the folio containing piece number 5.
The copyist has identified these textless ‘Tenor’ parts as being from compositions of ‘4
parts’; these descriptions are found at the top of each folio. None of the nine works is
attributed and there are no instrumental or vocal titles included on the folios. However, as
the music of piece numbers 1-8 is instrumental in character (piece number 9 could just as
easily be vocal in origin) it is quite possible that these parts might have once belonged to
viol consort fantasias.
I have shown my copy of these parts to Gordon Dodd who has indicated that the works
are not found in his index of viol compositions. While there is not much that can be
determined from isolated parts such as these, the music appears to be consistent with the
melodic style of instrumental consort writing of a number of Elizabethan composers such
as William Byrd, a composer I would be inclined to put at the top of any list of possible
contenders.
The sole part-book in the Archive Library was originally owned by Thurston Dart, who
received the volume as a gift. It is to be hoped that someday the missing part-books
belonging to this particular set will be located for they are [40] likely to have the remaining
manuscript parts of these nine works bound in three out of the four outstanding volumes
of Byrd’s 1589 print.
RICHARD CHARTERIS
Music Department
University of Sydney
N.S.W. 2006
Australia
NOTE
Thurston Dart’s copy of the tenor part of William Byrd’s Liber primus sacrarum
cantionum quinque vocum (1589), referred to in Richard Charteris’s letter, was sold at
Sotheby’s sale on 27 November 1987 to a private buyer for the sum of £2,600; see
Arthur Searle: ‘Salerooms-Manuscripts and printed music’, Early Music, xvi/2 (May
1988), 253.
EDITORS
Dear Editors,
The fantasies a3 by ‘John Okeover’ in the Society’s SP 154 are a welcome addition to
the published repertoire. In the interests of accuracy, may I add an historical footnote? The
unique source for these pieces, GB-Ob MSS Mus. Sch. D 245 -7, ascribes them to ‘Mr
Okar’.
Y
In fact four of the five known manuscript sources for his whole work use the shorter
version of his name, Oker or Okar: viz. D 245 -7 itself, GB-Lbl Add. MSS 17792-6 (a5),
GB-Lcm MSS 1045 -51 (anthems), and the lost Gloucester source a3 known from a
seventeenth-century catalogue. The main five-part source (Lbl Add. MSS 17786-91) uses
both versions, Okeover predominating, yet even here the sequence concludes ‘Here endeth
Mr Okers fancies’. No source uses only ‘Okeover’. All five are datable to within the
composer’s lifetime.
On the question of nomenclature the music manuscripts are thus in broad agreement
with the biographical evidence surveyed in my article on the composer in Chelys xvi,
showing that in contemporary usage Oker/Okar was more widespread than
Okeover/Okever. The longer version probably came into modern usage through the fivepart works in Add. MSS 17786 -91 becoming known earlier than the rest of his music - see
for example previous editions of Grove, and DNB.
Seventeenth-century spelling is notoriously unsystematic. And what is in a name? But
standard usages have some practical advantages, and the VdGS seems to prefer them, e.g.
the replacement of ‘Coperario’ by ‘Coprario’ since publication of Dr Charteris’s researches.
History too carries some weight. On the evidence in this case, the Society may perhaps
wish to consider giving a lead in favour of ‘Oker’ as the norm, as suggested in my article.
JOHN BENNETT
25a Alma Place
Oxford
[41]
JOAN HASSALL O.B.E. (1906-1988)
JOAN WESS
When Joan Hassall died on 6 March this year, the art world and book-loving public
mourned one of this country’s finest wood-engravers. Her exquisite illustrations to
many books, from the 1930s to the 1970s, earned her the highest respect: she was the
first woman Master of the Art Workers’ Guild, and was awarded the O.B.E. in 1987.
Joan Hassall had the distinction of being chosen to design the invitation to the
Coronation, a postage stamp to celebrate the Silver Wedding of the King and Queen in
1948 and a book plate for Edward Heath.
For members of this Society and for her many musical friends our loss is threefold:
we mourn a musician of ability and sensitivity, a strong supporter of the Society, and
most of all, a person of many unusual qualities who enriched the lives of all who were
privileged to know her. Joan Hassall played a number of instruments - flute, recorder,
keyboard (piano, spinet, clavichord, and organ), a small Morley harp which she
sometimes used as a continuo instrument for viols, and probably the most important to
her of all, the viol. In the May Newsletter, Bernard Palmer described how he and Joan
came to the viol and to the Viola da Gamba society in 1962. From 1969 to 1974 she
was a valued member of the Committee, making her comfortable house in Kensington
Park Road available for committee meetings and playing meetings, and leading the
Society to its present meetings’ venue - the home of the Art Workers’ Guild in Queen
Square.
Anyone who was fortunate enough to have played in consort with Joan will have a
store of vivid impressions, and no recollection of her musical life could be complete
without mention of a few of them. To make music with Joan was a particular pleasure one was aware of her deep musicality and the warmth which was of her character. Her
own delight in playing was transported to those around her, and a sort of holy
contentment exuded from her corner of the consort. Joan’s company was always a joy her keen observations of all that was around her were a source of continual
entertainment, delivered in a fragile voice which she once overheard (delightedly)
described as ‘London posh’. One treasured her robust sense of humour (surely
inherited from her famous father, John Hassall the poster artist), the way she enjoyed
the ‘thumps’ in lyra-viol pieces, her ready association with Byrd at his most extrovert as
well as his most ‘sublime’ (Joan’s choice of word) and her particular love of Jenkins’s
consort music. Finally, one remembers Joan at Malham in Yorkshire in her last years,
when she faced much ill-health and failing eyesight with fortitude, surrounded by cats
and all kinds of gadgets, and her mirth at the electronic clock that chimed Bach’s
Minuet in G in duple time.
Joan Hassall’s wood-engravings will surely delight many future generations one
thinks especially of such books as The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes [42] (1955), the
novels of Jane Austen, which she illustrated for the Folio Society (1957-63), and
Collected Poems of Andrew Young (1950). And there are two books devoted entirely to
her work: The Wood Engravings of Joan Hassall, by Ruari McLean (1960) and Joan
Hassall, by David Chambers (1985). For our part, in the Viola da Gamba Society, we
will continue to find pleasure in the decorative frame for the In Nomine part, which
Joan designed for the Society, and which was used for Sup. Pubs. nos. 77 and 78
(Gibbons five-part In Nomines) and no. 64 (Ward six-part In Nomine). One hopes that
it will be possible to use the frame on future occasions, to serve as a souvenir of Joan
Hassall, who enlivened many viol playing occasions, and whose friendship was so richly
valued by many members. In Bernard Palmer’s words, we remember her ‘with gratitude
and pride’.
ERIC MARSHALL JOHNSON (1899-1987)
JOHN R. CATCH
Eric Johnson’s most notable contributions to viol playing were as teacher and
promoter of consort playing. He was truly an excellent teacher, enthusiastic,
methodical, patient, persistent, and almost unfailingly good-humoured; but he put first
things first and could be huffy with anyone who fussed about frills before he had a
competent command of basic bowing and fingering. He was enthusiastic about the
thoroughly professional standards achieved by the Wenzinger consort in the 1950s and
1960s, but equally so in encouraging the humblest of amateur groups, with whom,
again, he would concentrate on basic musical requirements.
Eric, with his wife Cecily Arnold, researched, copied and edited a remarkable
quantity of seventeenth-century English music, of which only a small fraction was
printed. Many of us in those distant days augmented our own collections of consort
music with manuscript copies from texts which Eric and Cecily made available to us.
As with many people of a gentle, unassertive manner, there was underneath a firm
core of quiet self-confidence. Eric always had a great respect and regard for Canon
Galpin, and in their different careers, I suspect that their characters had much in
common, getting on with the work they had chosen to do without arrogance or
polemics.
Eric told us more than once that he would wish to leave the world before he became
unable to play any more, and he had his wish. He never told me what his parting
message might be for those of us who came after; he would I think have rejected the
very idea as conceited. But it may be guessed at with some confidence. A smile, a
twinkle in the eye, and Just carry on making music. I shall be listening up there.’
MUSIC REVIEWS
Thomas Lupo: The Two- and Three-Part Consort Music. Edited by Richard
Charteris. Boethius Press, Clifden, 1987. £38.
XX Konincklycke Fantasien. Edited by Rudolf Rasch. Amsterdam, 1648/
Reprinted 1987. £24.45, available from Brian Jordan.
Until recently Thomas Lupo has been the least-known of the quartet of Jacobean
court composers who effectively created the English consort tradition. Orlando
Gibbons has been extensively studied, and his consort music has appeared in several
editions - most recently in Musica Britannica, xlviii. Richard Charteris has done Coprario
proud with his John Coprario: A Thematic Index of his Music (New York, 1977) and with a
series of scholarly editions published in Britain and America. Ferrabosco has been
tackled less systematically, but most of his four- and five-part fantasias have been
edited either in our Supplementary Publications or in the English Consort Series, and his
Lessons for 1, 2 and 3 Viols (London, 1609) has appeared in facsimile (New York, 1973).
Meanwhile Dr Charteris has been working through Thomas Lupo. Boethius Press
published his editions of the complete vocal music in 1982 and the four-part consort
music in 1983; the present volume consists, apart from two ‘duos’ and three pavans, of
twenty-five three-part fantasias, six of which have apparently not been edited before.
Lupo’s three-part fantasias invite comparison with the nine famous works printed in
Orlando Gibbons’s Fantasies of Three parts. Gibbons’s set divides into two groups. The
first four, the more contrapuntal and conventional works, are scored for treble, tenor
and bass. The other five are generally more modern in style: they have passages in a
lively dance-like idiom similar to the almans of Coprario’s fantasia suites and they are
similarly scored for two trebles and bass, though there is no obvious evidence that they
were intended to be played with organ accompaniment. Lupo’s three-part fantasias also
divide into ‘conservative’ and ‘modern’ pieces, though he was clearly happiest with the
modern idiom. His counterpoint is less assured than Gibbons and some of the twotreble pieces are more like dances than fantasias: they do not open with imitative entries
and they only differ from extended ternary almans in that section endings are marked
by fermatas rather than repeat signs. Lupo also experimented with unusual scorings.
One fantasia, VdGS no. 27, Charteris no. 16, is for two tenors and bass; four others,
VdGS nos. 5, 6, 8, 24, Charteris nos. 4-6, 14, are for two trebles and tenor; two more,
VdGS nos. 15, 26, Charteris nos. 12, 15, make up what might be described as an
‘antithetical pair’, since they are for three trebles (transposed in two sources for three
tenors) and three basses respectively.
What can these connections between Gibbons and Lupo tell us about the origin of
their fantasias? In the 1950s Thurston Dart suggested, on the basis of the [44] limited
archival material then available, that both wrote their modern pieces for the Private
Music, the court chamber ensemble that included Lupo as violinist, Coprario and
Ferrabosco as viol players and Gibbons as organist. 1 We now know that Dart was
essentially correct (a typically inspired guess), but that the ensemble was in Prince
1
T. Dart: ‘The Printed Fantasies of Orlando Gibbons’, M&L, xxxvii (1956), 342-49
Charles’s household, not in the main royal music; it only became the Private Music in
1625 when Charles became king and his servants were brought into the main royal
household. Gibbons and Lupo can be identified as his servants in 1619-21 and 1618-19
respectively from autograph documents now in GB-Lcm MS 2187, GB-Lbl Add. MSS
33965 and 48590 and GB-Ob MS Autog. C. 19, f.148. From other evidence, too
complex to be detailed here, we know that a section of Prince Charles’s musicians was
known as ‘Coprario’s Music’, that its repertory included Coprario’s fantasia suites and
Gibbons’s great bass-viol fantasias and that its members included the violinists Adam
Vallet and John Woodington.
There is, furthermore, documentary evidence to connect some of Lupo’s three-part
fantasias with Prince Charles’s household: the Dutch publisher Paulus Matthysz wrote
in the introduction to XX Konincklycke Fantasien (Amsterdam, 1648), a volume of
English three-part fantasias including works by Lupo, Coprario and a reprint of
Gibbons’s printed set, that the collection had originally been selected to serve at ‘the
wrecked marriage festivities between England and Spain’. This must be an allusion to
the wedding that would have taken place had not Prince Charles’s trip to Spain in 1623
to woo the Spanish Infanta ended in failure. My information is derived from Rudolf
Rasch’s interesting introduction to the facsimile reprint of the volume, recently issued
by the Belgian company Musica Alamire. Several other volumes from the same source
are also of interest to viol players.
I have explored the background to Lupo’s three-part fantasias in some detail here
because Charteris is disappointingly vague on the subject; indeed, in several respects his
introduction falls short of the standard we have come to expect from his work on
Coprario. To begin with, he follows John M. Jennings in The New Grove and elsewhere
in stating wrongly that Ambrose Lupo was brother to Joseph (the composer’s father)
and Peter Lupo. In fact, Ambrose was their father (and Thomas Lupo’s grandfather) see, for instance, Joseph’s statement in his denization document of 1600-1 that he was
the son of ‘Ambrose Lupo and Lucia his wife’. 2 It is not accurate to say that Peter and
Joseph Lupo ‘migrated from Italy to London in the middle of the century’. Although
they were born in Venice, the work of the Antwerp historian Godeliebe Spiessens has
shown that they were members of the Antwerp musicians’ guild from 1555 and 1557
respectively; they presumably came to England from there, and they received their
court appointments in 1563 and 1566. 3 Charteris also seems to be unaware of the
research published by Roger Prior, David Lasocki and myself in 1982-3 which showed
that the Lupos and a number of other immigrant families at the Tudor court were
Sephardic Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin. 4 ‘Lupo’, like Wolf’ [45] and ‘Lopez’,
was a surname adopted for Gentile society (it was presumably an ironic commentary on
the Christian perception of Jews as financial wolves); the Jewish family name of the
2
3
4
W. Page (ed.): ‘Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalisation for Aliens in England 1509-1603’,
Publications of the Huguenot Society, viii (1893)
G. Spiessens: ‘Geschiedenis van de Gilde van de Antwerpse Speelieden (Deel xvide eeuw)’, Revue
Belge de Musicologie, xxii (1968), 33; Public Record Office, E351/541, ff. 51, 96
R. Prior: Jewish Musicians at the Tudor Court’, MQ, lxix (1983), 253-65; D. Lasocki: ‘Professional
Recorder Playing in England 1500-1700, is 1500-1640’, EM, x (January 1982),23-29; P. Holman:
‘The English Royal Violin Consort in the Sixteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical
Association, cix (1982-3), 39-59
Lupos was recorded in a probate document of 1542 as ‘deolmaliyex’, a word that seems
to be a corruption of ‘de Olmaliach’ or ‘de Almaliach’, a form of the Sephardic name
‘Elmaleh’.
Turning to Thomas Lupo himself, a persistent problem has been the existence of
other Thomas Lupos - particularly his first cousin, the son of Peter Lupo, who was also
a member of the court violin band; he was baptised on 7 June 1577 at the London
parish of St Botolph, Aldgate. 5 Although it is unlikely that the confusion between them
will ever be entirely resolved, it is possible to improve on the information in The New
Grove (largely followed by Charteris). A conventional birth-date for the composer has
been c. 1570 - a guess based on the fact that he first appeared at court in 1588 (not
1587 as stated by Charteris) following Francis of Venice’s death on 26 January of that
year. 6 However, since his father Joseph lived in the London parish of St Olave, Hart St,
it is likely that his baptism was recorded there on 7 August 1571 under the name
‘Thomas s[on] [of] Basanew’. 7 Since Thomas’s mother was Laura Bassano, the daughter
of the court musician Alvise, it is likely that the clerk at St Olave mistakenly set down
his mother’s maiden name instead of his father’s name; there was a Thomas Bassano at
that period, but he was baptised on 27 February 1588/9 at All Hallows, Barking. 8
Charteris (following Jennings) appears to be correct in ascribing all of the ‘Thomas
Lupo’ music to the older man, for the Declared Accounts of the Chamber for 1625-6
record him as ‘Thomas Lupo Senior Composer of the violins’; he was thus presumably
the individual who wrote and arranged masque dances for the violin band. 9 It can also
be shown that it was the elder Thomas Lupo who was a member of the households of
Prince Henry and Prince Charles, so he was presumably also the composer of the threepart fantasias and the other contrapuntal consort music. Two of the autograph
documents from Prince Charles’s household mentioned above (dated 2 September 1618
and 16 October 1619) bear a different signature from one for arrears of wages from the
Chamber dated 5 April 1647, Ob MS Autog. C. 19, f.149. The 1647 document must be
by the younger Thomas since the elder died in the winter of 1627-8. 10 Incidentally, he
was replaced by his son Theophilus at Christmas, so he probably died in December
1627, not in 1628 as is usually stated. Charteris assumes that a letter dated 13 January
1627/8 from ‘Thomas Lupo’ to Secretary Nicholas requesting a purser’s place (not
‘pursuer’ as in Charteris!) for his son in the Navy was written by the composer shortly
before his death, but it is in a third hand and is probably the work of a seafaring
member of the family. 11 Yet another nautical Thomas Lupo, with a distinctive fourth
hand, drew on wood a chart of the Mediterranean; it is inscribed Mayde By Thomas
Lupo in Shadwell & Neere unto The Mill’. 12 The Lupo family needs to be sorted out
properly in print; this introduction is a missed opportunity.
Dr Charteris proves to be far more effective as Thomas Lupo’s editor than as [46]
5
Guildhall Library, MS 9220
6
Public Record Office, E351/542, ff. 100, 148; Lbl Add. MS 34195, f.13
7
D. Lasocki: Professional Recorder Players in England, ii (Ph.D. Diss., University of Iowa, 1983), 591-4
8
Ibid., ii, 560
9 Public Record Office, E351/544, f.201
10 Public Record Office, AO1/393/66
11 Public Record Office, SP 16/90
12 Lbl Add. MS 10041
his biographer. Judging from spot checks and a play-through of much of the volume,
his musical texts appear to be commendably accurate, and are based wherever possible
on early sources - particularly a group of manuscripts written by an as yet unidentified
Jacobean court musician. Incidentally, one of these, MS fF1995M4 at the Clark Library
in Los Angeles, a set of three part-books first described by Charteris, may actually have
been compiled for Prince Charles’s circle; apart from four incomplete early fantasias by
Jenkins, it consists entirely of music by his servants: Lupo, Coprario, Gibbons and
Robert Johnson. 13 Two fantasias for three trebles by Lupo and Johnson, nos. 10 and 18
in this collection, are obviously related by their rare scoring; perhaps the composers
were collaborating in some way for a particular occasion or in a spirit of friendly rivalry.
Several aspects of Charteris’s handling of manuscripts in the Filmer collection at Yale
University Library require comment. The two ‘duos’ from Filmer MS 3, nos. 17 and 18,
are clearly incomplete as they stand: there are a number of nasty moments of exposed
fourths in both pieces, and the composer has made no attempt to incorporate bass
notes into the two lines - the cadences, for instance, are all made 2-1 (or 2-3) and 7-1.
Both pieces are alman-like dances (one is like a masque dance with a concluding tripletime section) and appear to have a bass part, and possibly one or more inner parts,
missing. 14 Charteris also mentions, but does not print, two galliards in the lateElizabethan Filmer MS 2; his description of them needs correcting in several respects.
Although the collection consists of three part-books, the dances, including the two
Lupo pieces, occur in only two of them: an alto or second treble part and a bass part.
They are nos. 12 and 15, not nos. 6 and 9 (these numbers come from a sequence
starting with no. 7) and they presumably have more than one part missing, since the
consort concordances in the collection are with five- or six-part pieces.
Despite these criticisms, which are mainly concerned with the introduction rather
than the musical text, Dr Charteris’s edition is an important addition to the Boethius
catalogue, and will be indispensible for anyone interested in Jacobean consort music.
Like other volumes in the series, it is nicely printed and is presented in hardback (for
the score) and paperback (for the parts). We are promised further volumes of Lupo’s
five- and six-part consort music; they will hopefully provide an opportunity for the
introductions to be brought up to date.
PETER HOLMAN
Orlando Gibbons: Five-part In Nomines. Edited by George Hunter. Northwood
Editions (1987). Available from Brian Jordan or direct from the publisher, $9.
It seems so right that the great works of chamber music should be available in
collective form and in parts. The huge scores found on the library shelves perch
precariously on the music stand and turning over the pages is somewhat difficult when
both hands are otherwise employed. Surely music must be played before it can be
listened to, and it is only through being played that music becomes known and loved.
But playing music requires parts. George Hunter has also provided a score and sure
13
14
R. Charteris: ‘A Rediscovered Source of English Consort Music’, Chelys, v (1973-4), 3-6
A number of other pieces ascribed to ‘Lupo’ in the same source, not printed by Charteris, appear to
be by Thomas Lupo’s son Theophilus, for the bass parts of three of them are found in Ob MS Mus.
Sch. D. 220, B flat section nos. 22-4 ascribed to ‘Theo Lupo’ and ‘The: Lupo’.
enough Gibbons’s music is as good to the eye as to the ear. And unless I am mistaken
George Hunter is the first person in history to provide printed parts of Byrd’s
magnificent chamber music (in their original key); and is not Byrd a giant?
So much good was done in this direction by the Viola da Gamba Society’s
supplementary publications, even if they did at one time go brown at the edges and
smelt of chemicals. What must have been the most popular of Gibbons’s five-part In
nomines, judging by the number of sources in which it originally appeared, and now
known as No. 2, was first made available by the German Viola da Gamba Society in the
1950s and was in the most beautiful manuscript imaginable; and they also produced
some of his madrigals which after all were called fantasias in GB -Och MS 21, so that
they could be played on viols. It can often be more rewarding to play a fine madrigal
rather than a bad fantasy. Then No. 2 (as we shall call it) appeared in Musica Britannica
ix with the appropriate scholarly notes, and parts were made available as off-prints. It is
true to say that they were rather heavily laden with marks of expression and
articulation, but are not all editorial marks likely to become dated after so many years?
Surely the great [48] beauty of these In nomines is that they are devoid of these, so that
every time they are played they can sound different and perhaps reveal something new.
Fashions in editing are always changing. At present the original notation is often preferred
and in long bars. It is certainly pleasurable to the eye and often it seems to have the effect
of making the music sound more serene. Also the alto clef has been reinstated for the
middle parts; surely the clef which has middle C right in the middle of the stave has a
somewhat commanding position? All this is to be found in George Hunter’s edition. And
he has retained the original key of No. 2: minor with one flat, which does not seem
unreasonable. The whole textual commentary is a massive piece of labour and is worth
study to see the complexities of editing old music.
No. l so rightly begins as Taverner’s In nomine did - the very first - but here it is in
diminution. There is a beautiful patch in the middle which Hunter describes as frozen time.
No. 2 makes use of the cantus firmus holding the rhythm together and so allowing the
other parts to continue playing in syncopation for a long time, ending with climbing dactyls
in the manner of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, but easier on viols than on trombones. In
No. 3 he is already striding around in large intervals just as William Lawes was to do some
thirty years later. But what is so wonderful about these works is that they are all of a piece,
as if in starting to write them he could already see the end. Very beautiful music. Viol
music.
FRANCIS BAINES
Pierre Jacquier and Jean Louis Charbonnier: L’Art de Jouer la Basse de Viole. 2
vols., Heugel, Paris 1987, £15.90 and £13.30.
Here are two very useful supplements to the ever-growing range of pedagogical material
for the viol. They are not tutors as such, but volumes of exercises which, although devised
by Charbonnier especially for those interested in playing the French solo repertoire, are
relevant to all players who are seeking to improve their technique.
The books are laid out very clearly: seven chapters in all each devoted to a different key
and including such edifying material as scales, left-hand strengthening exercises, studies and
chordal scales, followed by a selection of appropriate French pieces, many of them by
Marais (a continuo book for each volume is supplied).
In the introduction to the first volume Charbonnier uses quotes from French writers
including J. B. Forqueray, Loulié, Rousseau and Marais to cover very briefly the subjects of
ornamentation, bowhold and left hand position. The rest is a short history of the viol
supplied (in French of course) by Pierre Jacquier, and accompanied by an excellent table
showing the different types of instrument as described by writers through the ages.
In the second volume Jacquier writes in some detail about the history and [49]
construction of the French seven-string viol and then provides useful advice of the general
care and maintenance of your own instrument, including diagram showing how to tie new
frets and hints on stringing.
Overall these books are to be recommended, but beware the price, they an certainly not
cheap!
SUSANNA PELL
Johann Pachelbel: Kanon and Gigue für drei Violinen and Basso continuo Edited
by Anne Marlene Gurgel. Peters, Leipzig/Dresden, 1985. £7.75.
Karl Munchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (who recorded the Canon in
1961) were originally responsible for the amazing popularity of this piece, without which
no anthology of baroque pops can be complete. It is not, of course, intended for orchestra
at all, but is among the small number of pieces for three solo violins and bass. There are
problems in preparing an edition. The main source was probably lost in the war. The
Canon, however, was published in Urtext form as part of an article by Gustav Beckmann
(Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft, i (1918-19), 267-274). The Gigue appeared with the Canon in a
less satisfactory edition by Max Seiffert as Organum III, xxiv (Kistner & Siegel Leipzig,
1929) with considerable editorial dynamics and phrasing. This has generally been used as
the source for subsequent editions and arrangements. This new edition is based on a
different source: Berlin Staatsbibliothek Mus.MS 16481/8, dating from around 1800. It is
mentioned by Beckmann in connection with a Partie for violin, two violas and violone, but
in a slightly indirect manner, so perhaps he was confused and this is in fact the lost source.
Be that as it may, the new edition is disappointing. The score is fine, but the parts include
bowings and fingerings by Christoph Jacobi made on the assumption that a group of three
or four notes can only be phrased by slurring some of them. So a good opportunity of
providing an accurate edition for the conscientious player has been missed. My
expectations that this would make my own less legible but slur-less edition (King’s Music,
£3.00) redundant have not been fulfilled.
CLIFFORD BARTLETT
André Danican Philidor: Pièces à deux basee de viole basee de violon et baryon ...
Paris ... 1700. Minkoff, 1988. £22.65.
As a former music librarian, I feel some attachment to someone whose entry in The New
Grove begins with the words ‘Music librarian’. In that capacity, he was responsible for a
considerable amount of the music surviving from the French seventeenth-century Court.
His grandfather or uncle Michel (c.1600-1659) had joined the royal grand ecurie around 1650,
followed soon after by his father (c.1620-1679). Both Andre (c. 1647-1730) and his brother
Jacques (1657-1708), [50] distinguished as l’ainé and le cadet, were employed by Louis
XIV, as were many of the thirty-three children the brothers produced; the best known
of these was André’s youngest son François-André (1726-1795) who excelled as a chess
player as well as a dramatic composer.
As a performer, Andre seems to have concentrated on wind instruments, including
the bassoon; so the instrumentation on the title page deserves attention. At first glance,
it may be suggesting two alternatives: two bass viols or bass violin and bassoon. But the
wording at the head of the first page of music is slightly different:
Pieces a deux basses de viole
De viole de violon et de basson.
This gives three possibilities: two bass viols, two bass violins or two bassoons. Since
there are no chords (except for a few passages in thirds) nor any other indications
idiomatic to the bass viol, perhaps this is really bassoon music. Philidor was also a
drummer, and he includes a drum part for a Marche du Roy de la Chine.
Readers of Chelys interested in the French viol repertoire will probably already have
acquired the edition by Barbara Coeyman (Dove House, Viola da Gamba Series no. 21),
which is perfectly satisfactory. But if you have not, and fancy some attractive and not
too difficult bass duets, the consideration is primarily economic. The original engraving
is very clear, and reproduced with Minkoff’s customary clarity, so two players should be
able to read a single copy. The Dove House version provides two copies and is cheaper
(£4.50 from Brian Jordan).
CLIFFORD BARTLETT
Anon. (Berlin School, c.1760): Sonata in C major for bass viol and basso
continuo. Edited by Donald Beecher and Bryan Gillingham. Dove House
Editions, Canada, Viola da Gamba Series no. 44. C 3.90 score and parts.
The British Library manuscript of music by Roland Marais closes with this
anonymous piece. The only true sonata in the collection, it is evident from the musical
style that the piece cannot be attributed to Marais and the editors quite rightly identify
the style to Berlin shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century. They suggest that
it may be the work of Christoph Schaffrath and compare it to C.P.E. Bach.
Unfortunately I am reminded only occasionally of that composer and never of his lyrical
moods (e.g. there is nothing here to compare with the first and last movements of the
D major sonata).
The sonata is in three movements: slow, not quite so slow and slow minuet. Judging
from the nature of the technical demands, the composer probably played on the viol
himself. The abundance of consecutive thirds makes for thickish textures and slowish
tempi, but they provide a useful exercise in coping smoothly with awkward shifts of
hand. Yet the quality of this sonata rarely justifies the [51] effort in mastering its
technical difficulties, and such effort I would suggest should be confined to the home.
The editors are to be commended on presenting the music in an exemplary manner:
leaving inconsistencies in articulation as they appear in the manuscript, using the
original clefs of treble octave down and bass (though I think it would have been useful
to point out that the bass clef is at written pitch), and reproducing the figures in the
continuo exactly. The realisation is useful only in that it can easily be ignored, otherwise
it commits all the usual sins: too high, doubling exactly the viol, and so on. But
somehow I do feel that there is still much solo viol music, even from this time and
place (for example C.P.E. Bach’s C major - a new edition of the D major?), that is more
worthy of the editors’ talents.
RICHARD BOOTHBY